The Busy Product Manager’s Guide to The 2024 State of Product Management Report
Calling busy product professionals! We get it–your days are packed with roadmap review meetings, brainstorming sessions, and making (what sometimes feels like) too many PowerPoint presentations. That’s why we’re here to lend a helping hand. At LIKE.TG, we’re committed to empowering product leaders and teams with everything they need to navigate the complexities of the product development lifecycle and ensure they make the right decisions and deliver on strategic initiatives. And guess what? We’ve been crunching the numbers, analyzing the trends, and distilling them into bite-sized insights so that you can have the tools you need to thrive as a product leader. For the ninth edition of our State of Product Management Report this year, we asked product professionals to share their experiences with adapting to uncertainty, how they imagine the future of their solutions with their product vision, and how they are delivering on their vision despite budget constraints and smaller teams. We compiled insightful responses from over 1400 product professionals worldwide and analyzed them to spot the latest trends. So sit back, grab a cup of your favorite brew, and let us give you a sneak peek into this year’s latest product trends and uncover game-changing insights! 3 Key Findings from Our Study 1. Despite some significant challenges, 2024 is the year of product It’s official, 2024 is shaping up to be the year of product. Product leaders focus cross-functional teams on the right priorities by creating a concise product strategy that can quickly adapt to changing circumstances and deliver products customers want and need despite limited internal resources. It’s important to note that this doesn’t come without challenges. We asked what people considered their product organization’s biggest challenge, and 38% of organizations identified economic uncertainty as the most significant challenge. Changing market conditions has been just one of the many challenges product organizations have faced in recent years. Global economic uncertainty, changing consumer habits, and artificial intelligence significantly influence how product managers function and their work. As a product leader, staying knowledgeable about potential challenges is pivotal. By adapting swiftly to evolving consumer needs and making strategic decisions, you’re setting yourself up to thrive in the year of product. 2. There’s a desire for standardization that drives tool consolidation As product organizations scale, teams are more actively looking for a standard way of tracking product activities and their related outcomes. This is most immediately observable in the trend toward consolidated product management platforms. When we asked what jobs-to-be-done people believed were essential for product management tools to perform, three-fourths of respondents (76%) said product strategy, and over half (58%) said roadmapping was an essential investment for the team to make. Product teams shared that live meetings, product management platforms, and slide decks were among some of their top techniques to communicate product strategy. As product organizations expand and teams grow, the need for standardization becomes paramount. Streamlining product activities and outcomes through consolidated product management platforms isn’t just a convenience – it’s a strategic necessity for sustainable success. 3. AI impacts products and how product managers work During 2023, Artificial Intelligence became a must-have technology for businesses, leading some organizations to adopt AI so they didn’t miss out. In 2024, product leaders are taking a sober look at AI and taking a more reasoned approach to embracing it. They’re including AI in their product in a way that solves customer problems. They’re also using AI with their product management tools to make their lives easier. Unsurprisingly, over 50% of respondents have identified their first AI use case, and 19% already use it in multiple places. The integration of AI into product management platforms is becoming essential. Embracing AI streamlines product management processes and empowers product managers to dedicate more time to crucial tasks like research validation and strategy development, ultimately driving greater value for both customers and businesses alike. We’ve only scratched the surface on the latest product management trends. You now know a little about the challenges product organizations face, the desire for tool consolidation, and how AI has influenced product management. It’s clear that several factors are working together to make 2024 the year of product. Product has moved front and center and has assumed its role as the strategic nerve center of the business… And there’s still so much more to uncover! This is just a glimpse of the data-backed enlightenment from our 2024 State of Product Management Report. If our findings resonate with you and spark your curiosity, don’t think twice. Download our complete, data-backed, comprehensive report today and learn what other product professionals say about strategy, outcomes, customer feedback, and more!
The Challenge of the Feature Factory
Does your product team celebrate launching that feature they’ve spent the last three months working on and then never give it another thought until it breaks? Is the senior leadership at your organization constantly ordering you to work on the top 10 priorities that change every other day? Are you too busy to reflect on how your product team can work better together? Then you probably have to begin to face the challenges of being in a feature factory. What is a feature factory? John Cutler coined the term feature factory upon hearing a software development friend complain that he was “just sitting in the factory, cranking out features, and sending them down the line.” The term has gained traction ever since. And even with all the bad-mouthing that feature factories have received since John originally coined the term, they still exist. LIKE.TG’s 2023 State of Product Management Report found that 54% of roadmaps are designed around outputs. Only 43% communicate outcomes. Who knows what the other 3% focus on… What happens when a product team is a feature factory So are feature factories all that bad? After all, you’re producing a lot of features. Isn’t that a good thing? Not always, no. Your unrelenting focus on pushing features out to market results in multitasking, over-utilization, and the hard-core environment that only Elon Musk would love. Ways to know your team is a feature factory: You produce a lot of features, but you don’t always know how they relate to each other and if they produce a viable solution. Your product becomes too complicated to use. You constantly add features and never remove any. Your product becomes too difficult to maintain. When you furiously add features without considering how they work with existing features, you end up with a maintenance nightmare. You introduce many features, but you never take the time to reflect on how to improve them. Instead of iterating, you move on to the next big thing. You’re more likely to introduce features solely for the sake of closing a big deal, which leads to several of the issues described above. Download How to Structure Your Product Management Organization for Success➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5a8c45d2-3eb5-402a-ac48-fe7597dd4d69', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); How does a product team become a feature factory? Ok, so if feature factories are so bad, why do so many product teams go down that path? Our 2023 State of Product Management Report gave some clear indicators. Per the report: “Reviewing customer feature requests” is the number one source of actionable product ideas (35%). That’s not too surprising because feature requests (usually expressed as a solution) can seem like an easy way to decide what to work on. But when you don’t dig deeper into those requests and identify the underlying problem, you risk hoping on the feature conveyor belt – introducing features with no overarching understanding of why except for “our customers asked for it.” Role of senior leadership Senior leadership is also a common source of product ideas, according to the report. That source of ideas comes with a big downside – a lack of product manager confidence. The report explained product managers are “five times more likely to rate their confidence [in their ability to identify problems worth solving] at one out of six when ideas come from senior leadership compared to respondents getting their ideas from other sources” Suppose senior leadership tells you what to build. In that case, you’re probably not going to be very confident in your ability to identify problems to solve, and you’re more likely to focus on outputs. Another reason teams focus on outputs and risk becoming feature factories because it’s hard to measure outcomes. When asked if the return on product development investments meets their senior leadership’s expectations, nearly a third of PM’s responding to the survey said, “I don’t know.” Based on the low adoption of tools for post-release evaluation and reporting, you could interpret that as a sign that they aren’t measuring return on investment. So if you don’t have a good way to measure return on investment, the path of least resistance is to measure progress by how much stuff you’ve delivered. As proof of that, 70% of roadmaps most influenced by senior executives focus on communicating outputs over outcomes. A final cause of feature factories is a poor execution of your product strategy or lack of a clear product strategy. Ideally, your product strategy provides the tie between your business’ goal and objectives and your plans for your product. Suppose you don’t have that guiding north star. In that case, you’re more likely to find yourself whipsawed from one emergency feature release to the next to satisfy the loudest customer or the latest HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). Feature factory, here we come. How to avoid the trap It doesn’t have to be that way. There are some simple ways that your product team can avoid the soulless monotony of cranking out features. To start, change how you communicate what you’re building and why. Talk more about the value you’re delivering and less about the specifics of the features you’re working on. Next, treat customer requests as feedback – Talk directly to your customers, and learn how to read into their requests to find the underlying problem. After all, customer requests are feedback, not requirements. Finally, give product teams a mission – a problem to solve – and let them figure out how to solve it. When the outcome comes from leadership, it should be clear they care about it, so your team will look to how well they’re solving the identified problem as your gauge of success. Want more insights like this? Check out our 2023 State of Product Management Report to get in-depth information about where product teams are now and where they’re headed. Download Our 2023 Product Management Report➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3606e408-64b7-428e-92de-d70da69b7d2a', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
The Challenge of the Feature Factory
Does your product team celebrate launching that feature they’ve spent the last three months working on and then never give it another thought until it breaks? Is the senior leadership at your organization constantly ordering you to work on the top 10 priorities that change every other day? Are you too busy to reflect on how your product team can work better together? Then you probably have to begin to face the challenges of being in a feature factory. What is a feature factory? John Cutler coined the term feature factory upon hearing a software development friend complain that he was “just sitting in the factory, cranking out features, and sending them down the line.” The term has gained traction ever since. And even with all the bad-mouthing that feature factories have received since John originally coined the term, they still exist. LIKE.TG’s 2023 State of Product Management Report found that 54% of roadmaps are designed around outputs. Only 43% communicate outcomes. Who knows what the other 3% focus on… What happens when a product team is a feature factory So are feature factories all that bad? After all, you’re producing a lot of features. Isn’t that a good thing? Not always, no. Your unrelenting focus on pushing features out to market results in multitasking, over-utilization, and the hard-core environment that only Elon Musk would love. Ways to know your team is a feature factory: You produce a lot of features, but you don’t always know how they relate to each other and if they produce a viable solution. Your product becomes too complicated to use. You constantly add features and never remove any. Your product becomes too difficult to maintain. When you furiously add features without considering how they work with existing features, you end up with a maintenance nightmare. You introduce many features, but you never take the time to reflect on how to improve them. Instead of iterating, you move on to the next big thing. You’re more likely to introduce features solely for the sake of closing a big deal, which leads to several of the issues described above. Download How to Structure Your Product Management Organization for Success➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5a8c45d2-3eb5-402a-ac48-fe7597dd4d69', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); How does a product team become a feature factory? Ok, so if feature factories are so bad, why do so many product teams go down that path? Our 2023 State of Product Management Report gave some clear indicators. Per the report: “Reviewing customer feature requests” is the number one source of actionable product ideas (35%). That’s not too surprising because feature requests (usually expressed as a solution) can seem like an easy way to decide what to work on. But when you don’t dig deeper into those requests and identify the underlying problem, you risk hoping on the feature conveyor belt – introducing features with no overarching understanding of why except for “our customers asked for it.” Role of senior leadership Senior leadership is also a common source of product ideas, according to the report. That source of ideas comes with a big downside – a lack of product manager confidence. The report explained product managers are “five times more likely to rate their confidence [in their ability to identify problems worth solving] at one out of six when ideas come from senior leadership compared to respondents getting their ideas from other sources” Suppose senior leadership tells you what to build. In that case, you’re probably not going to be very confident in your ability to identify problems to solve, and you’re more likely to focus on outputs. Another reason teams focus on outputs and risk becoming feature factories because it’s hard to measure outcomes. When asked if the return on product development investments meets their senior leadership’s expectations, nearly a third of PM’s responding to the survey said, “I don’t know.” Based on the low adoption of tools for post-release evaluation and reporting, you could interpret that as a sign that they aren’t measuring return on investment. So if you don’t have a good way to measure return on investment, the path of least resistance is to measure progress by how much stuff you’ve delivered. As proof of that, 70% of roadmaps most influenced by senior executives focus on communicating outputs over outcomes. A final cause of feature factories is a poor execution of your product strategy or lack of a clear product strategy. Ideally, your product strategy provides the tie between your business’ goal and objectives and your plans for your product. Suppose you don’t have that guiding north star. In that case, you’re more likely to find yourself whipsawed from one emergency feature release to the next to satisfy the loudest customer or the latest HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion). Feature factory, here we come. How to avoid the trap It doesn’t have to be that way. There are some simple ways that your product team can avoid the soulless monotony of cranking out features. To start, change how you communicate what you’re building and why. Talk more about the value you’re delivering and less about the specifics of the features you’re working on. Next, treat customer requests as feedback – Talk directly to your customers, and learn how to read into their requests to find the underlying problem. After all, customer requests are feedback, not requirements. Finally, give product teams a mission – a problem to solve – and let them figure out how to solve it. When the outcome comes from leadership, it should be clear they care about it, so your team will look to how well they’re solving the identified problem as your gauge of success. Want more insights like this? Check out our 2023 State of Product Management Report to get in-depth information about where product teams are now and where they’re headed. Download Our 2023 Product Management Report➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3606e408-64b7-428e-92de-d70da69b7d2a', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
The Critical Importance of Finding Time for Strategic Thinking and Planning
In our 2021 State of Product Management report, 97% of senior leaders said being strategic is the most important thing for their organization’s success. But at the same time, 96% of those same leaders say they don’t have the time for strategic thinking and planning. So why is it so difficult to find time for strategic thinking and planning? I threw this question to the crowd in a LinkedIn post and received some surprising and insightful responses. Time Management Time management remains an essential theme for product teams because there aren’t enough hours in the day. Strategic thinking and planning tend to fall to the sideline for other pressing needs. One possible solution is “outsourcing” some strategic thinking to junior staff members before passing it onto senior management to make the final call. “I think they don’t have the time to do so,” said associate product manager Evelyn EBO. “Hence the need to have young and innovative minds who follow the trends of the industry to come up with these strategic thoughts while the senior leaders review and align it with the organization’s business goals.” Strategic thinking and planning may require some intentionality, but there are plenty of ways to work them into the rhythms and schedule of a product team, such as working on it as a team, carving out some “alone time” to focus on a deep dive, or holding an off-site session. It all starts with a commitment from leadership that strategic thinking and planning are worth the time and makes it a core tenet of the team’s approach. Prioritizing Quick Wins Nearly every product has a backlog of great ideas, and customers continually generate additional requests and wish lists. The backlog creates excessive pressure to deliver value and appease the “squeaky wheels” as quickly as possible. That low-hanging fruit is so darn appealing because it’s an easy win. It offers minimal effort and rapid rewards. But just like junk food is initially filling and satisfying without providing a ton of nutritional value, constantly front-loading your development queue with these “quick wins.” A feature-factory mindset means you’ll never get around to the complex, important work until it’s reached a crisis point. Moreover, the most critical projects may not cover every use case and contingency due to poor planning. Download Developing a Product Team Checklist ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'd8abf101-87a4-49aa-b909-2dcb3743fb8b', {"region":"na1"}); Turning an Abstract Concept Into Practice Another common thread is the difficulty some product leaders and organizations have grappling with something as broad and malleable as “strategy.” Some teams have trouble defining the specific tactical actions required to work on a product strategy, and they sometimes struggle to define “strategy” in the first place. “It can be difficult since ‘strategy’ is an abstract concept – at least for me,” said program manager Michael C’deBaca. “I’ve found it’s better first to define strategy. Here’s my take (not my idea, picked it up somewhere along the line): it’s identifying and quantifying business problems in the area of interest; deciding which problems to address; putting people, processes, and technology in place to execute the decisions; evaluating/measuring the execution; and finally acting on the evaluation/measurements. For me, this breaks down the abstract concept into smaller, and hopefully easier-to-work-on, pieces.” Brant Cooper, an author, founder, and CEO, thinks a misunderstanding of strategic thinking even plagues many industries. “I don’t think people even know what they mean by ‘strategic.’ It’s maybe worse management speak than ‘innovation,’” Cooper said. “Management consulting firms hire 20-something-year-olds to help with corporate strategy. I mean, really? I think they mean they wish they were more proactive. But they are reactive, go to too many meetings, fighting fires, pulling hair out, etc.” Regardless of who does the upfront work, the product strategy must ultimately be aligned with stakeholders from across the organization and imbued in every product element, particularly the product roadmap. Strategy becomes the guiding principle for the team when you have company-wide support and align objectives. Strategic Thinking and Planning Shouldn’t Require All of Your Time Another take is that “being strategic” shouldn’t be a dedicated activity product leaders need to find time for… because they should already be doing it at all times! With a top-down strategy in place, ensuring each tactical decision and minor task are all done with the overall strategy in mind is far more accessible. A solid strategic foundation prevents you from retrofitting existing structures and plans to a newly developed approach. A sound strategy ensures a net positive outcome on your team’s goals, objectives, and overall vision. The vision remains the focus at all times, so it never requires any “extra effort.” Stick to the Essentials of Strategic Thinking and Planning Product managers and leaders never lack things to do. Our plates are always overflowing, and there’s inevitably another hat someone is desperate for us to wear. To break free of this neverending cycle, we must pare things back and do less overall, while ensuring what we are doing is truly important. With an emphasis on strategic thinking and planning, we can focus our attention on what matters. To achieve this, we must learn how to say no. We must understand which product enhancements and features don’t support our strategy. Furthermore, we must also learn to say no to tactical activities that waste time. Therefore, you must realize that you can’t do everything. Free yourselves and manifest the strategic thinker and planner customers want. Our products don’t need every bell and whistle. Moreover, it’s not practical to go to every meeting and read every customer support inquiry. Using a strategic imperative as our guide, we can carve out the hours required to establish strategic thinking and planning. There will always be details to attend to, but you can’t let that get you distracted from your true objectives. For more insights on how to become an essentialist product manager, download my free book here. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '76fe99ed-928a-45e4-ae8d-9429927741a3', {"region":"na1"});
The Difference Between Thought Leadership vs. People Leadership
At times, product professionals fail to realize the similarities and differences between thought leadership vs people leadership. A compelling thought leader most likely started as a people leader, such as a manager or a director. In itself, leading is a sought-after position that requires specialized knowledge and experience. Professionals may decide to pursue a leadership position to lead a team and guide them towards primary objectives and milestones. Leaders are the ones that provide all the go-to answers. There are rewards for having the position, both in money and respect. And those in leadership positions have a hard-earned experience that allows them to navigate their colleague towards actionable plans. That said, being a thought leader is close to meaningless if you’re not a people leader, which is one of the primary connections between thought leadership vs people leadership. You can opine all day about the best way, but if it’s not the best way for your people, then it’s a sum-loss game. Even if you are thoughtful with your written pieces and presentations, you miss out. The Start of Thought Leadership Product management is complex. The work is ambiguous. The long hours working on a craft can take a toll if you don’t have the right people behind you. Product leadership requires cross-disciplinary thinking from fields as software development to manufacturing. A vast breadth of insight and the best practices gives a product leader a unique insight. Their point of view combined with their experience brings multiple products from ideation to market. That is how best practices are born, and when leveraged, can make great things happen. Hopefully, that is how most product professionals advance in their careers. They’ve taken those ideas and put them to work. Who in the world is Charlie Munger? Charlie Munger is Warren Buffet’s investment partner and has a reputation as a wise investor. He has an impactful way of looking at the world, which he calls mental models. One of the most useful for those who want to work involves the concept of the “Circle of Competence.” “You have to figure out what your aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes, and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence. When the ego goes into the wrong place, operating outside of an individualized circle of competence has disastrous results. Easing the transition of leadership Product leaders need to implement best practices and stay inside the organization’s circle of competence. Though imposter syndrome may affect people differently, product leaders need to feel empowered to utilize their product experience and translate that knowledge into their new role. Whether it’s a new company or a new team, these professionals need to show empathy towards the company culture. Newly hired leaders must respect the company culture and exhibit a level of empathy towards their new team. The leadership transition also affects employees, so an effective leader knows how the change affects their colleagues. Taking Your Thoughts Into New Territory If a tree falls into the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Let’s adapt the famous question into one that fits “people leadership.” “If you have a best practice, and it doesn’t change the culture, is it a best practice at all?” Being good at what you do is a given. You’ve earned that experience in your career. None of that matters if you can’t relate to your current environment. Talking about your ideas is useless if it doesn’t affect the company culture. It’s about managing relationships. People have to respect what you bring to the table. If they don’t see you as credible, your value decreases. If your ideas don’t connect, then you are that tree mentioned earlier. Best practices are fascinating thought exercises, but if they don’t affect change, that is all they are. Digital Transformation Blues Enterprises struggle with transformation. Anyone that has done this work long enough has seen the following play out: The new hire comes on board and promises a digital transformation within eighteen months. They come in with all sorts of bonafide – they’ve worked with all the essential companies. The leader makes a big speech and gets the team fired up. Then nothing happens. Let’s make a couple of bets for this transformation: the teams have a communication issue and find themselves siloed. They have the best practices and experience, but they can’t connect. The behavior does not align with the values of the company. When asked about it, they get process documentation, if anything at all. These examples show how thought leadership can happen without culture shifts. Culture-Shifting Practices Now, here is an example of effectively applying culture-shifting practices. 1.) The leader comes on board and promises a digital transformation within eighteen months. When the leader comes in, they avoid the splash. Instead of trying to grab the spotlight, they spend time listening. They do so to understand the culture they are working with, where their experience can help, and where it won’t. 2.) The leader comes in with all sorts of bonafide – they’ve worked with all the “essential” companies. Instead of leading with company names, the leader leads with experience. They tell stories that pair with the listening tour and give the folks around them a feel of who they are. Along the way, they find minor problems and fix them. 3.) The leader makes a big speech and gets the team fired up. The leader distributes the work. Instead of putting themselves out front immediately, they learn. After finding the actual difference makers, they get their buy-in before going to the group. This way, they know they have support at all levels. Avoid agile-fall Those three changes put culture first. The company gets to be better at making changes because the changes tie to a realistic vision. For example, when shifting from waterfall to agile, go to each team and understand what waterfall did for them. After understanding each team’s waterfall processes, you can develop a business case to sell your agile product management strategy. Listen, apply your experience, and get buy-in. If you are running more reviews of the process than retrospectives, you’ve fallen for the trap. We’ve all been on teams where agile turned into “agile-fall,” and everyone sours on the process. Change is hard, and our thoughts need to evolve. The process is iterative, and when you treat it that way, you’ll get better. Download the Product Planning Process Guide➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'a00f7861-658a-4ef3-829a-60fc115c8a11', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Minding the Gap: Thought Leadership vs. People Leadership Changes are an evolutionary process. They aren’t something that happens only once. Leading doesn’t mean being curious and going to make the conference talk. Remember this: “If you have a best practice, and it doesn’t change the culture, is it a best practice at all?” The concept also applies to ourselves. Making an impact once is good, but we want to expand our circle of competence. There is an opportunity to build that muscle by working within our culture, seeking new problems, and staying curious. When you do that, you shift. You go from one experience to multiple. Remember, leadership is ambiguous, and what you do here won’t always get you to the place you want to go. The more product narratives you have, the more you can exhibit your competence around the organization. Every cycle of change is another opportunity to add to your toolkit. Please focus on the culture, and cultivate it like a plant. From there, you’ll see things develop. That development helps develop yourself as a realized thought leader. An influential thought leader can tell a product narrative in multiple ways while shedding light on the problem from different angles. They can level up to standard best practices by being flexible. We can’t avoid the will to lead. It’s a part of us being leaders. Please don’t deny it, as it may lead you to overdo it. It isn’t harmful to use it to grow opportunistically. It’s essential, however, to stay curious to find ways to develop your craft further. Change is Hard, so Use it to Get Better. Change is hard, and our thoughts need to evolve. It’s an iterative process, and when you start treating it that way, you’ll get better. That said, being a thought leader is close to meaningless if you’re not a people leader. As you do that, you’ll craft the best environment to increase productivity from your team and improve your abilities. Remember, when the team gets better, you get better. Change is hard, and it takes time. Coming in and dropping in ideas isn’t going to do anything. Being able to take those ideas, help them evolve, and make them relevant is the step to leveling up your career. Culture isn’t just something that comes from best practice documents. It is living, growing, breathing. When you treat yourself, the team, and your career that way, you’ll find yourself in a position to take it to the next level. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '2b4f63c6-f7c6-4f60-842d-1f11880da92f', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
The Empathetic Product Manager
Empathy. You’ve heard it’s an essential skill for product managers, marketing managers, and UX teams. But how can you put empathy into practice when engaging with customers and prospects? Empathy is a way of understanding your customers’ underlying needs and motivations. I believe that empathy can lead you to build a better product and then explain to the world why you’re building it. I think of empathy as listening closely but also as a way of asking better questions that matter. Here are a few tips and examples you can use during your customer interviews to arrive at unique insights you wouldn’t have otherwise – and ultimately build great products. Understand How Customers Define Success A good place to start is by asking questions to help understand a customer’s motivation to solve a problem. If your product is B2B, you want to understand what they want to achieve with their business and the metrics they use to measure success. In B2B, it’s important to remember that “customers” are not businesses but people. Here’s an example: When I was helping to validate the product that eventually became AppFolio, we scheduled several long conversations and in-person visits with our target business owners. We wanted to learn about the products they used but also to understand what they wanted to achieve with their business. At first, we assumed that they wanted to make more money. That often was true, but frequently we heard something different. Many simply wanted to maintain the business but run it more efficiently so they could have more free time (we heard about golfing on Fridays more than once). Others wanted to build a sustainable business they could pass on to their son or daughter. By understanding these motivations through empathetic questioning, we could build a product and compelling value proposition that resonated with our target customer. For your customers, ask the basic questions that illuminate success metrics – for example: “Why did you start this business?” “How did you get into this job?” “How do you know you have had a successful year?” Understand How They are Solving Problems Today When talking with prospects, ask for examples of how they solve their problems today. If they are currently your customer, they may be supplementing your solution with other solutions—this is essential to understand. You can discover great product opportunities when customers are cobbling together multiple solutions (including spreadsheets and paper) to solve the problem. For B2B products, there is no better option than being in their office to see the systems, workflow (and problems) first-hand. You can also see nonverbal cues. Phone interviews are fine, but seeing stacks of paper, wall charts, sticky notes, and other workarounds can give your team inspiration for innovative ways to solve the problem. Uncover the True Motivators As a product manager, you already know it’s crucial to uncover pain. But sometimes, customers and prospects tell you what you want to hear. Or tell you something is important when it’s actually not very high on their priority list. Asking the right questions can help you get to the true motivators. Here’s an example: When researching the concept that became LIKE.TG, we interviewed dozens of product managers to understand their product roadmapping process. As a result, we uncovered a lot of pain and motivation to change an ineffective process dominated by spreadsheets and presentation tools. But we learned that the challenge for them wasn’t only about saving time and getting out from under the burden of Excel and PowerPoint. By asking the right questions and listening closely, we understood that it was also about creating a compelling vision and looking good in front of stakeholders and executives. As a result, our product roadmap software looks beautiful and delivers on speed and ease of use. The best way to uncover true motivators is with open-ended questions. Using “why” and “how” are great tools to use often. Couple that with listening closely, and you are on the right track. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); A Few More Tips for Empathy Listen to their language. Listen closely to the way that customers phrase their problems and their domain space. Then, use that language when talking with them. These descriptions and words can not only provide you with a way of discussing issues in a common language, but you can later use this language to describe your product and build out value propositions that resonate. Debrief after each interview. If you can, interview in pairs or as part of a team. Take notes and have a follow-up discussion to document what each of you heard. I guarantee that you heard things differently. Let customers answer questions themselves. Don’t prompt them with suggested answers. Instead, give them time to answer the question. Sometimes uncomfortable silence is good and will yield responses you might not have gotten otherwise. I’ve seen first-hand how empathetic questioning and listening can help uncover true motivations and provide a path to better products. It’s also great to let customers know that we care enough to truly understand them.
The Essentialist’s Way to Building Better Products
“Am I working on the right things?” “How can I fit it all in?” I find myself asking these questions almost daily, both in my personal and professional life. How can I spend my time working on the things that matter most? Even with the world in upheaval and our shift to distributed work, these questions are still top of my mind. With my trips, events, and other plans postponed for now, there are so many other things that can potentially fill up my time in this time of uncertainty. Many of us live our lives doing 100 things at the same time. Trying to please everyone. Trying to do it all. I certainly have fallen into this camp. As a result, we scatter our energy and don’t make significant, meaningful, or satisfying progress on any of those 100 things. Recently, I really enjoyed reading the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown and gave a talk about the essentialism concepts internally at ProductPlan. I highly recommend it for product leaders and anyone who aspires to make the biggest possible contribution to their work and life. If I could summarize this book in one sentence it would be: “Less but better.” Now, if there’s a single statement for product managers to live by, that would be it. I’ve often thought that product leaders can learn lessons about building better products from the methods we use to prioritize our personal life. So let’s look at the concept of “essentialism.” Download The Essentialist Product Manager ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'be753440-dc4d-40c5-9808-cad744d00a28', {}); A Quick Primer on Essentialism According to the book, an “essentialist” is someone who lives by design, not by default. An essentialist isn’t reactive, but rather makes choices deliberately by separating the vital few from the trivial many. Essentialism is an approach for determining where your highest value is, and then executing on it—to the exclusion of many other activities. An essentialist says “No” a lot. According to McKeown, essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. Does that sound a lot like what product managers do every day as we prioritize what to build? An essentialist says, “I choose to work on only a few things that really matter.” By carefully choosing these few things that matter (for our products and our lives), we can make great leaps forward. Moreover, we’ll live a life that feels in control and one that matters. The “Non-essentialist” Product Manager According to McKeown, there are ways that a “non-essentialist” thinks. As I read the book, I found several parallels to ineffective product management. Here are a few patterns that might represent “non-essential” thinking by product managers: “It’s all-important.” A non-essentialist product manager will try to be all things to all people. They will struggle to fit it all in – all the meetings, feeling like they are responsible for everything. They are the product expert with all the answers, and no decisions can be made without their input. “More.” A non-essentialist product manager will focus on “more.” It’s undisciplined and reactive. More features to beat the competition. More saying “yes” without thinking first. Or saying Yes because it’s the easier path. What’s the harm of fitting in one more user story? “Are we working on the right things?” A non-essentialist product manager, because they take on too much, will often feel out of control. They’re unsure if they’re working on the right things, and as a result, will ultimately feel overwhelmed and unsatisfied. If any of those statements sound familiar, that’s OK. We all fall into that trap occasionally. All of us that are building products, will at some point feel or exhibit these patterns. Yet there are ways of thinking and organizing our days so we don’t get to that point—after all, don’t we all want a sense of purpose, ease, and satisfaction in our work? The Mindset of the Essentialist Product Manager How can you foster the mindset of an essentialist product manager to avoid those traps? Here are four lessons I took away from the book that you can apply to your personal and product life. 1. Create space for thinking. For most product managers, our days are filled with video meetings, calls, writing emails, writing stories, interruptions on Slack, and so on. With the recent switch to distributed work, we have been given this opportunity to create time in our day for strategic and creative thinking without the constant interruptions. What would that look like? An essentialist creates time in their day for insights and contemplation, rather than putting out fires all day. This process also applies to our working space. Many of us are now working from home—is your space one where you can focus? Is it pleasant to be in? Since you might be spending about one-third of your day there, why not make it one that inspires you to think creatively? For me, taking a break during my day for outside time (a walk, run, or even a stroll in my backyard) is a great way to process what to work on next. 2. Define your product’s purpose. When was the last time you thought through your product’s purpose and mission? The OKRs you’ve been managing? How is your product differentiated from the competition? What is your product best at, and how can you double down on that? With so much economic disruption, you can no longer take it for granted that your product’s vision and mission will be the correct one going forward. Now is a time of reset for reflection on those things. What you (and your team) decide will set the stage for which initiatives are the most important things that you choose to work on next. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '9a04bfbc-d25b-47c1-b063-2ab47b0229d9', {}); 3. Implement the minimum product. This is the opposite of the “it’s all-important” mentality. I’ve written a lot about the minimum viable product (or the minimum sellable product) that provides value to customers. Now is the time to take that philosophy to heart. I recently wrote about decluttering your product backlog. Revisit those epics in your backlog and scale those back. What will give your customers the most value with 50% of the effort you previously estimated? 4. Pause. Say No. A non-essentialist product manager will pause before eventually saying “Yes.” An essentialist says “No” a lot, focusing on the vital few. Product managers will need to do this with empathy and reasoned explanations about why the answer is No (or “not yet”). Additionally, it’s not only about saying “No” to feature requests. But rather, not committing to projects and decisions that do not lead you towards the greater goal. By saying No, and having a well thought out justification, you will foster more respect among your peers, stakeholders, and customers. Help them understand what the tradeoffs are. What will they (or the company) be giving up if you choose one path versus another? If you have items in your product backlog that you now realize you won’t get to within the next six months, that’s probably a sign that you’re committing to too much. Likewise, if your day is back-to-back meetings, perhaps you can review your schedule next week and opt-out of a few. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '1f74539e-d4fc-4cb3-97c6-fd86de2bf62e', {}); Takeaways—Claim Back Your Time. These are only a few ways that product teams and entrepreneurs can introduce an essentialist mentality into their day. In talking with other startup founders and product leaders I often hear the challenges of “not enough time” as a common refrain. Perhaps with essentialism, we can claim back that time, work on what matters, and make better products as a result. Download the Free Product Leadership Book hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'b3ac6e76-f5cd-45d6-95a0-813fcd905bd1', {});
The Evolution of Product-Led Growth
The evolution of product-led growth may seem to be a recent trend at software companies, but the underlying concepts have been in full force for years. Being product-led is a path to success: we’ve seen consistently that product-led companies achieve faster growth once they achieve scale. Companies like Slack, Zoom, Calendly, Hubspot, and Dropbox are often mentioned as examples. But there are thousands of others that have achieved faster growth through similar methods. I’ve had the fortune of working on teams launching some of the early SaaS products going back almost 20 years. All of them baked product-led growth into their business models. In this article, I’ll give you some examples of product-led growth from my own experience. And I’ll additionally provide a few thoughts on where it’s all heading. But first I’ll quickly explain what I mean when I say “product-led”. To me, it means that the company is thinking product-first and is focused on the customer experience. It means they use the product itself to drive growth through new sales and expansion revenue. In my experience, the best companies build the business model to help the product achieve faster growth without adding a commensurate number of salespeople to the mix. Rather than the previous generation of software companies with high friction sales models, in a product-led company the customers themselves foster the growth. My Experience with GoToMeeting: Growth Built-In In 2004 I helped launch GoToMeeting, one of the earliest web-based products with a SaaS model. The product was acquired by Citrix, and later by LogMeIn. I was on the team conducting market validation and I led the early customer discovery interviews. I then wrote the product requirements that outlined the features, value propositions, and business model. We took our learnings from launching two earlier products at the same company and created a model integrating several characteristics that, while we didn’t call it product-led at the time, clearly were product-led. These characteristics helped create a wildly successful product and a model for future companies: Self-service model. Customers could use the free trial and purchase one or a few licenses with a credit card. We experimented zealously and continued to optimize the purchase flow and experience. While this seems like a no-brainer for so many software companies today, at the time it was an uncommon approach and helped our rapid growth. Easy to get started. The product was easy to get up and running without any training. Viral licensing model. Participants could join the meetings for free. This allowed viral awareness within organizations because it was so easy to get started. This then fostered growth as participants decided to host their own meetings and purchased a license. Customer-focused pricing model. Our “all you can meet” pricing model was innovative at the time and was so appealing to customers who were used to the unfriendly meeting models such as per-participant / per-minute Product-Led Growth at LIKE.TG My company LIKE.TG launched our product roadmap platform in 2013 and we baked in product-led growth from the very beginning. In our early market validation, we discovered that product managers wanted to try the product on their own before buying. For that reason, we launched with a completely self-service model and didn’t hire our first salesperson until years later in 2016. Here are some of the characteristics of LIKE.TG that make us product-led. Educational focus with inbound marketing. Our low-key educational approach to content allows product managers to learn about us through high-quality articles, books, webinars, and other content. They choose to engage with a trial when they are ready. Fully-functional Free Trial. Product managers can sign up for a free trial without a credit card and get access to all the features in our entry-level plan. Easy to get started. Product managers could build (or import) their first roadmap in minutes – our interface is laser-focused on getting started fast. We deliver value in minutes, even before purchasing the product. Self-service purchasing model. Since we launched in 2013, customers have been able to purchase licenses without contacting us. This makes it possible for product managers and others in larger organizations to “go rogue,” and purchase LIKE.TG (sometimes using their own credit card). This approach helps plant the seeds within an organization for future growth. Free viewer licenses. When a product manager shares their roadmap for free to others (including executives), awareness within other teams grows – they are then inspired to purchase their licenses to create and edit their own roadmaps. Easy to add more licenses. For our basic plan customers can add more licenses without contacting us – as awareness grows internally it’s easy to add a license so new people can get started immediately. Network effect. As adoption grows within an organization, the value of LIKE.TG increases. As more product teams adopt the solution, we’re seen as a platform and the need for standardization across the organization becomes important. The standardization included in our enterprise plans evolves to be a requirement. These features provide even more value for larger organizations and an upgrade path for additional recurring revenue for us. I’m not saying that we’ve nailed product-led growth. We have a lot more to learn and do. And our model continues to evolve. Today we have an enterprise account management team and more options for trying the product, including coordinated team trials, but our core product-led approach is still there. Core Principles Going Forward What I’ve described so far are a few basics from my experience that companies can adopt to become more product-led. My opinion is that we can focus on a couple of core principles to become more product-led in our companies. A couple of my favorite products can provide some insight. The first core principle is to deliver an outstandingly positive user experience. A great example of this is Slack. Like many of you, we’re a customer, and it was their thoughtful focus on creating a simple and fun way for our team to communicate that created rapid and enthusiastic adoption. The other core principle is some kind of viral growth built into the business model – often accelerated by existing customers. I’ve been a customer of Calendly’s meeting scheduling tool for a while now because it makes it so easy to find meeting times. I chiefly use it for scheduling calls with customers. It’s the virality of their product that fascinates me—every time I send an invitation to someone to find a meeting time, I’m essentially sending an email to a new prospective customer for them. The product doesn’t need an overly aesthetic UI to have product-led growth. It’s so easy to get started that this product gains fast adoption. For those of us in the software world, most of us want to evolve to be product-led. By looking at these examples you hopefully are inspired to build growth levers into your product and business model. Have other examples? I’d love to hear what you think.
The Journey from Customer Success to Product Manager
There are many roles where your career path is clear. But, product management is a different story. People have transitioned to successful careers as product managers (PM) from every background. I know this experience firsthand and I’m thrilled to say, LIKE.TG itself recently made a similar hire: from customer success to product manager. That new PM is me. The Journey from Customer Success to Product Manager If you’re in customer success and want to make a jump into product management, I’ll share some of the practical lessons I learned and tips on how you can make a similar move in your career. Why LIKE.TG Was the Ideal Place to Make the Transition from Customer Success to Product Management Let me make one caveat up front. Your best chance of finding a direct path from customer success to product management is within a company that is customer-centric. I don’t mean an organization that includes the phrase “customer-centric” on its website, although that can’t hurt. I’m talking about a company that lives this philosophy. A company that treats solving customers’ goals as a top priority. Why is this so important? A company that evaluates its customers’ success as a key metric for its own success will be more likely to understand the value a customer success manager can bring to the product team. Fortunately for me, LIKE.TG is such a company. (I’d even go so far as to call this team customer-obsessed if you promise to keep that between you and me.) A relentless focus on the customer has always been a core element of LIKE.TG’s culture. Nobody here gets points for a feature or an upgrade because it looks cool. Every update we make to our roadmap software product first has to provide a satisfactory answer to the question: How will this improve the lives of our customers? It’s this relentless focus on the customer that allowed my colleagues to see the potential in bringing a CSM over to the product side. As the company’s first Customer Success Manager, I’ve spoken with at least as many LIKE.TG customers as any other member of the team. LIKE.TG is customer-focused and understood that this gave me a real insight into our customers’ needs and priorities. With that in mind, let me share the best lessons I learned from making this move. 5 Lessons for Transitioning from Customer Success to Product Manager 1. Understand that product management is customer success A great first step is understanding that these roles are not as different as many people think. Yes, your job description and your day-to-day activities will change. But think about the purpose of both roles. Aren’t customer success managers and product managers after the same thing? Aren’t they both trying to help customers succeed with the help of the company’s products? When you understand the similarities of both roles, you’ll feel much more comfortable taking the steps to make this career move. You’ll also be less likely to fall victim to imposter syndrome and give up. Most important of all, you’ll have the confidence to explain to your employer why your CSM experience could make you a valuable addition to the product team. 2. Try to make the move within the same company A big part of my value to the product management department at LIKE.TG was the fact that I had gained so much first-hand experience supporting users of LIKE.TG’s product. Had I applied for a product manager role here as a CSM from another company, I wouldn’t have developed as much relevant expertise or value. When you want to go from CSM to product manager, try to make the move within the same company. Bonus tip: Another advantage I had working for LIKE.TG was that this company has a long history of hiring from within. I’d also recommend you start by looking for a CSM role in a company known for hiring internally. These are the employers most likely to give you a chance to prove yourself in a new role. 3. You need to really care about your customers As a customer success manager, my favorite part of the job was positively impacting a customer’s day. Usually by helping them solve a tough problem. I realized that a product job would allow me to have an even greater impact on our customers. That’s one of the things that appealed to me most about this role. If you find a similar sense of satisfaction and accomplishment in helping customers, then product management might be for you as well. In fact, this is one way in which CSMs can make the best PMs. It’s important to remember that as a product manager, your focus should always be on serving your customers. The products you develop are a means to that end. Customer success professionals understand this as well as anybody. If you’re motivated to move into product management because you’d like to stop working directly with customers, then you’re going to find your new role disappointing. Outstanding product management isn’t just about heads-down brainstorming with a tiny team and tinkering with prototypes. It’s also about speaking with as many customers and prospects as you can, so you can build products that make their lives better. 4. Voice your interest in product management When I started at LIKE.TG, our CS team consisted of… me. The company was so small, in fact, that I got the chance to help out in many departments—marketing, sales, and product. As the company grew and the teams all expanded, I knew there would eventually be an opportunity in product. I voiced my interest early. Recognizing that I was a serious candidate, our Director of Product, Annie Dunham, began giving me product management tasks while I was still in customer success. By the time an opening arose on the product team, I was in a great position for it. It might seem obvious, but don’t overlook the value of letting your product colleagues know that you’d be interested in contributing to their team. You’ll need to be patient. Eventually, you’ll find an opening. 5. Start honing your product management skills now You’re already using many of the skills every day that you’ll need to be a great product manager. But we can always improve our skills. Given that these skills are going to come in handy in your product management career, I’d highly recommend honing them right now: Become a great listener Pay close attention to what your customers are actually saying, not what you assume they’re saying because you’ve heard similar things before. Hear every customer out fully. Ask open-ended follow-up questions, draw out as much detail as you can. Learn how to say no Practice this by being a great listener. Give the other person a chance to fully express their request or idea or complaint, and then answer. Sometimes saying no can even mean saying “Yes, but not right now because of XYZ.” A lot of times, giving a customer or a colleague a chance to be heard is enough to satisfy them. Get organized Develop routines for your daily activities—work or personal. Whether you’re a CSM or a product manager, you’ll find the firehose of information never seems to slow down. You’ll want strategies and tactics to stay on top of the inflow of new data, rather than allow it to drown you. The sooner you start building these habits—making lists, breaking complex projects into actionable tasks, etc.—the more prepared and successful you’ll be when you start your first job as a product manager! I highly recommend the Ultimate Guide to Product Management Resources for more help. LIKE.TG has some other great interviews with other PMs who took non-traditional routes into the field, including: Engineer to product manager Corporate finance to product manager IT operations to product manager Consulting to product manager If you have any thoughts on how to transition, leave them in the comments below. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"});
The Journey from Customer Success to Product Manager
When you’re new to a product management role, you enter the situation with minimal credibility, name recognition, or trust beyond your hiring manager. When your entire job is to define a direction for the product and convince everyone else it’s the right one, that clean slate isn’t helpful. For this role, it’s essential to grow your sphere of influence. You need to win people over and give your ideas and suggestions a fair shake. Do this by convincing colleagues that your strategic decisions are based on sound data, adequate deliberations, and keen insight. This is why you need to establish allies and supporters early on and before you try to shake things up. 6 Steps to Building Your Sphere of Influence in Your First 90 Days A constant theme for new product managers is managing their sphere of influence. If you are new to the role or new to an organization, your starting months are critical. During a recent webinar hosted by The Product Stack entitled “Your First 90 Days as a New Product Manager,” Roxanne Mustafa, Design Lead at VMware, and Pivotal Tracker provides advice to new product managers. 1. Play the “newcomer card.” You only get to be new once. Don’t miss your chance to let your newness pay dividends. For a few months, you get to ask whatever questions you want. Explore assumptions and delve into the product and organization’s history with honest curiosity. Ask fundamental questions that you won’t be able to later. Probe in a non-confrontational way. Challenge ideas before the legacy of previous PMs clouds you. Learn the history, but don’t resign yourself to relive it. This will help you understand how and why things ended up where they are. Remember, you’re on a fact-finding mission. Your mission is to understand the tribal knowledge and what things were already tried and failed. To understand how failure was defined in the first place. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '8bd83652-2868-48a8-9b9c-ebb8e0b9c945', {}); 2. Utilize one-on-ones. Mustafa says the most important thing you must do is figure out who you must talk to and what conversations you should be having. The best way to do this is to start scheduling intimate meetings with stakeholders across the organization. Starting with the product owners. Stay in listening mode as much as possible, using the various insights you gather to slowly build up your opinions. Be sure to see whose names keep getting dropped. This way you get a sense of where the power centers are and who are the key influencers, then add meetings with those individuals to your calendar. Make sure you get on any relevant email lists, Slack channels, or standing meeting invites. Ask how each stakeholder and team defines “value” and “success.” This may not be consistent across the organization. Knowing which benchmarks and preferences each team has are useful. Particularly in understanding product managers’ views. Keep your one-on-ones on the shorter side to be respectful of their time. Thirty minutes should be plenty for those initial getting-to-know-you sessions. Follow up after the initial round when needed. 3. Demos, demos, and more demos. Any product manager should be familiar with their product and value propositions to give a product demo at the drop of a hat. As someone new to the product, demos can play an instrumental role in understanding the product. Seeing what different stakeholders think about it, and emphasize is important. So is showing existing colleagues that you’ve digested what the product has to offer and how to position it. To do this, schedule sessions with multiple people or teams individually. You’ll want to see sales, engineering, and the existing product team demo the product in isolation. This way their commentary and presentation aren’t influenced by whoever else is in the room (or on the Zoom). Each demo will vary in what they show off (versus gloss over) and what language they use. Seeing how sales sell the product versus what engineering believes is essential can be eye-opening. This gives insight into what each group prioritizes. You can document the gaps. Once you’ve witnessed everyone else’s take, it’s your turn. Your demo will not only illustrate that you’re now quite familiar with how the product works and the key talking points. It can also synthesize the different messages you picked up from your colleagues to give a more holistic view of things. 4. Ride shotgun with sales and support. Salespeople and support staff are the folks having the most interactions with actual customers and users. Sitting in on their calls can be very illuminating. Not only will you get a heavy dose of the voice of the customer and reinforce your commitment to customer-centricity, but you’ll also get a sense of your new coworkers. Don’t try to jump in and take over, although you can occasionally interject with a question or clarification. The real opportunity for interaction is when the call is over, and you can debrief with your colleague. These interactions can help build a report with them and show them you’re an inquisitive, thoughtful product manager. Not just some new person with a pile of opinions and assumptions. You’ll also be able to spot low-hanging fruit for some quick wins when the time comes to start prioritizing items. Be sure to ask whether anything that stood out on the call was an outlier or something they encounter. This will help you categorize what you hear as anecdotal or pervasive. 5. Search the archives. Can’t get enough forthcoming team members to talk? Support tickets and the support team can be another great resource. Reviewing these gives you insight into the current state of your customers. From there, you can review the product backlog. Note which stories were accepted in the past, the key milestones used, and how releases were packaged. You can peel back the onion even further by reviewing the conversation logs. This helps your understanding of how decisions were reached. In addition to what variables got a lot of attention, and who were the key players. Retrospectives will give you a sense of morale and feelings. If there were minutes or action items from previous retrospectives, these could be mined for details. If you’re able to attend (or even facilitate) a retrospective of a recent release, you can witness it all in real-time without any prejudices or skin in the game. Just be sure to stay in “listening mode.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); 6. Take a holistic approach. When you’re first learning the ropes, it’s natural to stick close to the other product team members. Or devote much of your time to building your relationship with engineering, but Mustafa warns against this. It’s important to expand in order to create your sphere of influence. Instead, she recommends taking a 360-degree view of the organization. Getting input and making connections with every department will help you get a fuller, less-biased picture. This will help you to forge connections with the organization’s broader swath and develop your sphere of influence. You never know when that will pay off, and it will certainly help you build cross-company support down the line. Make sure you also know what you’re accountable for. If the executive team expects a weekly dashboard or monthly update at an all-hands, find out and get ahead of it. Takeaways It can be hard to avoid speaking your mind and fixing obvious flaws as soon as you notice something awry. Reserving your opinions until later in tenure is the right move. You don’t want to suggest new ideas or try to impose any new methodologies until you have a solid baseline of understanding and discretely vet your ideas among a smaller, friendlier audience. If you come out shooting, many of your good ideas will be ignored or forgotten. At least until you’ve built up a stable of allies and established a favorable reputation throughout the organization. While your first 90 days isn’t your only opportunity to build your sphere of influence, it’s a great opportunity can set you up for an easier path to ship great products moving forward. Read the Career Guide for Product Managers hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '51f4627c-aefd-4981-92a8-41fe12455dbe', {});
The Key to Achieving Change Management Buy-In
Getting change management buy-in is not easy, but we’re only delaying the inescapable when we resist change. Whether it’s driven by economics, technology, politics, or the environment—those massive undercurrents can at best be held at bay before reality sets in. Most organizations are resistant to change by default. Inertia, process, bureaucracy, and governance are often cited as the primary hurdles. But fear and uncertainty also play an often unspoken-yet-prominent role. The bigger the company, the harder it can be to make even the smallest fundamental shifts. Yet, those same large organizations face the most risk by not adapting quickly and intentionally. Smaller, younger firms are by nature more agile, and it’s easier to get change buy-in. But small teams also have less to lose. It’s because larger, older companies have so much more at stake that failing to change can be that much more consequential. For example, my mission in my previous role at a company with over 30,000+ employees was to create a formal change management process or track record to lean on for their CRM system, Salesforce.com, and create a center of excellence around optimizing the firm’s usage of this critical tool. This wasn’t my first time helping an organization improve its Salesforce.com utilization. I’ve done this for multiple firms from a project management/PMO perspective. I’ve also had experience in change management, having spent eight years previously facilitating those. Let’s look at the critical steps that can affect the fate of significant transformations for organizations and successfully change management buy-in. 3 Critical Considerations That Affect Change Management Buy-in 1. Intentional thinking from the start. One fatal flaw many big change initiatives make is letting things “into the wild” before they’re fully baked. However, there might be a follow-on phase to tweak and tailor new tools and processes to the specific impacted groups. Employees won’t always wait until the paint is dry to begin using things. I’ll use Slack as an example. The asynchronous communication tool can be a huge boost for efficiency and collaboration. But when left to their own devices, early adopters can create some bad precedents. In this case, if you don’t create the correct channels and train staff how to use Slack properly, it can get out of control. This can both create bad habits and turn people off to the tool before it’s spun up. Yet, a productivity boon can end up as yet another system people use inconsistently. 2. Anticipating downstream ramifications. Management often initiates changes. A CFO, VP, or a Director thinks there’s a better, cheaper, or faster way to do something. Then they issue an order, and everyone beneath them in the organizational chart deals with the consequences. But managing change by edict is often a recipe for disaster on the ground floor. Executives frequently don’t have much insight into the day-to-day operations of various teams. Thus they can’t begin to recognize the disruption such a shift might cause. The power of working groups is effective. People on the ground are the ones that know what’s going on. Ideally, before a suggested change is even approved, the organization conducts a full forensic analysis of the implications for everyone impacted. That includes employees across the company, as well as strategic partners and even customers. The exercise might uncover potential unintended consequences. Regardless of how big or small it might be, every change requires a proper communication plan. The key is figuring out how you’re going to engage with everyone, drive adoption, detail the benefits, and get everyone on board. It should detail the rationale for the move along with any new or modified processes. If necessary, hold training or Q&A sessions to ensure the roll-out goes smoothly with minimal turmoil during the transition. 3. Centralized change management. Another key to successful change management is running it all out of a single unit, be it an ad hoc team, a more permanent center of excellence, or a formal PMO. There are many benefits from this kind of organizational structure. First, it breaks down silos in a way that’s often unattainable organically. This unit can both communicate across the organizational matrix and identify redundant efforts. This also puts trained practitioners in charge of structuring and facilitating these activities. Since this is what they do, they have the skills, tools, best practices, and resources to make things as seamless and standardized as possible. They also possess the institutional knowledge and expertise to anticipate friction points in advance thus minimizing potential damage via education and well-documented processes. Most importantly, utilizing a dedicated change management entity gives a holistic view of every major initiative. Regardless of where it began, keep in mind the entire organization and larger ecosystem during execution. Read the Strategic Roadmap Planning Guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '06f68ad8-23a4-4d4e-b15a-e578f0f8adaf', {"region":"na1"}); 4 Steps to Achieve Change Management Buy-in These are the steps for starting things off on the right foot. 1. Survey the landscape. Until you’re on the inside, it’s hard to know who the real players are. Nor do you know where the power centers lie and which baggage and political legacies influence projects. You see which names are being dropped, who people defer to, who made previous critical decisions or threw up roadblocks. At one point, I conducted 40 interviews across various groups to get the land lay but could have done more. Once I’ve identified these stakeholders, then I can understand how to best engage with them. I want to emphasize that it’s imperative to make sure you get things right when evaluating senior management. You need to know their motivations, concerns, and what they value most. Emotional intelligence is such a key factor as a leader. You can talk about industry knowledge and business process. Still, if you don’t have the emotional intelligence of people around you and their drivers, then you can’t figure out how to motivate them in the best way. Additionally, not everyone wants to receive information in the same way, nor do we all process it similarly. I make a point of asking key stakeholders right off the bet how they like to be communicated with, so I can try and meet them where they want to be. 2. Define and articulate a vision. No one’s a fan of change for change’s sake, so the value and purpose of this new role must be crisp, clear, and concise. From the C-suite to the cubicles, everyone should understand why this is important, the steps required, and which benefits the result will bring. Ideally, present tailored messaging for different audiences to connect with their pain points and address their concerns. But to do this, you need to know who you’re dealing with. I use the Insights method. To follow this method, first place stakeholders along a color spectrum, and then based on that designation, you can see what triggers stress along with the best ways to remedy that state. I do this to create the best chances for a successful interaction by acknowledging their feelings and speaking to them constructively. It’s also critical to not immediately dive into the details but rather to establish broader themes that the change will encompass. These themes might seem obvious at times, but a smart and accurate tagline for the initiative can become a helpful mantra and reference point for the project’s life. 3. Get change-buy in with a roadmap. Significant changes have a lot of moving pieces and dependencies. To get change buy-in, a project or program roadmap can help illustrate exactly how everything will happen. Using a purpose-built roadmapping tool is the answer to keeping everything organized and a clear vision to stakeholders. Using LIKE.TG, I capture every possible backlog item to ensure no requests or requirements get lost in the shuffle. In this central repository, we used LIKE.TG to prioritize initiatives. I categorize various things up for consideration before putting them into “buckets” to develop and ship together to create incremental value associated with a particular theme. Then I use a cost and complexity versus impact method for evaluating which items should get to the front of the line, and are happy to slot the low-hanging fruit in the front of the queue to deliver more value to stakeholders faster. With prioritized themes set, I build my roadmap. I use lanes for “containers” of specific items, which allows me to keep the roadmap clean and straightforward. Less is more about the level of detail presented to most audiences, but there’s always the option to drill down and get more refined information on a specific roadmap element. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); 4. It’s all about people. While tools, frameworks, and processes get a lot of attention, at the end of the day, what determines a significant change’s success or failure is how it is embraced and supported by the individual it impacts. The key to change management buy-in is having a clear vision and structure people understand so they see the impact of what you’re trying to do and how it affects them. If you don’t think about how they’re going to go about it, it will never be successful. Without engaging with the people who will use it, that will be your number one failure.
The Key to Achieving Change Management Buy-In
Getting change management buy-in is not easy, but we’re only delaying the inescapable when we resist change. Whether it’s driven by economics, technology, politics, or the environment—those massive undercurrents can at best be held at bay before reality sets in. Most organizations are resistant to change by default. Inertia, process, bureaucracy, and governance are often cited as the primary hurdles. But fear and uncertainty also play an often unspoken-yet-prominent role. The bigger the company, the harder it can be to make even the smallest fundamental shifts. Yet, those same large organizations face the most risk by not adapting quickly and intentionally. Smaller, younger firms are by nature more agile, and it’s easier to get change buy-in. But small teams also have less to lose. It’s because larger, older companies have so much more at stake that failing to change can be that much more consequential. For example, my mission in my previous role at a company with over 30,000+ employees was to create a formal change management process or track record to lean on for their CRM system, Salesforce.com, and create a center of excellence around optimizing the firm’s usage of this critical tool. This wasn’t my first time helping an organization improve its Salesforce.com utilization. I’ve done this for multiple firms from a project management/PMO perspective. I’ve also had experience in change management, having spent eight years previously facilitating those. Let’s look at the critical steps that can affect the fate of significant transformations for organizations and successfully change management buy-in. 3 Critical Considerations That Affect Change Management Buy-in 1. Intentional thinking from the start. One fatal flaw many big change initiatives make is letting things “into the wild” before they’re fully baked. However, there might be a follow-on phase to tweak and tailor new tools and processes to the specific impacted groups. Employees won’t always wait until the paint is dry to begin using things. I’ll use Slack as an example. The asynchronous communication tool can be a huge boost for efficiency and collaboration. But when left to their own devices, early adopters can create some bad precedents. In this case, if you don’t create the correct channels and train staff how to use Slack properly, it can get out of control. This can both create bad habits and turn people off to the tool before it’s spun up. Yet, a productivity boon can end up as yet another system people use inconsistently. 2. Anticipating downstream ramifications. Management often initiates changes. A CFO, VP, or a Director thinks there’s a better, cheaper, or faster way to do something. Then they issue an order, and everyone beneath them in the organizational chart deals with the consequences. But managing change by edict is often a recipe for disaster on the ground floor. Executives frequently don’t have much insight into the day-to-day operations of various teams. Thus they can’t begin to recognize the disruption such a shift might cause. The power of working groups is effective. People on the ground are the ones that know what’s going on. Ideally, before a suggested change is even approved, the organization conducts a full forensic analysis of the implications for everyone impacted. That includes employees across the company, as well as strategic partners and even customers. The exercise might uncover potential unintended consequences. Regardless of how big or small it might be, every change requires a proper communication plan. The key is figuring out how you’re going to engage with everyone, drive adoption, detail the benefits, and get everyone on board. It should detail the rationale for the move along with any new or modified processes. If necessary, hold training or Q&A sessions to ensure the roll-out goes smoothly with minimal turmoil during the transition. 3. Centralized change management. Another key to successful change management is running it all out of a single unit, be it an ad hoc team, a more permanent center of excellence, or a formal PMO. There are many benefits from this kind of organizational structure. First, it breaks down silos in a way that’s often unattainable organically. This unit can both communicate across the organizational matrix and identify redundant efforts. This also puts trained practitioners in charge of structuring and facilitating these activities. Since this is what they do, they have the skills, tools, best practices, and resources to make things as seamless and standardized as possible. They also possess the institutional knowledge and expertise to anticipate friction points in advance thus minimizing potential damage via education and well-documented processes. Most importantly, utilizing a dedicated change management entity gives a holistic view of every major initiative. Regardless of where it began, keep in mind the entire organization and larger ecosystem during execution. Read the Strategic Roadmap Planning Guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '06f68ad8-23a4-4d4e-b15a-e578f0f8adaf', {"region":"na1"}); 4 Steps to Achieve Change Management Buy-in These are the steps for starting things off on the right foot. 1. Survey the landscape. Until you’re on the inside, it’s hard to know who the real players are. Nor do you know where the power centers lie and which baggage and political legacies influence projects. You see which names are being dropped, who people defer to, who made previous critical decisions or threw up roadblocks. At one point, I conducted 40 interviews across various groups to get the land lay but could have done more. Once I’ve identified these stakeholders, then I can understand how to best engage with them. I want to emphasize that it’s imperative to make sure you get things right when evaluating senior management. You need to know their motivations, concerns, and what they value most. Emotional intelligence is such a key factor as a leader. You can talk about industry knowledge and business process. Still, if you don’t have the emotional intelligence of people around you and their drivers, then you can’t figure out how to motivate them in the best way. Additionally, not everyone wants to receive information in the same way, nor do we all process it similarly. I make a point of asking key stakeholders right off the bet how they like to be communicated with, so I can try and meet them where they want to be. 2. Define and articulate a vision. No one’s a fan of change for change’s sake, so the value and purpose of this new role must be crisp, clear, and concise. From the C-suite to the cubicles, everyone should understand why this is important, the steps required, and which benefits the result will bring. Ideally, present tailored messaging for different audiences to connect with their pain points and address their concerns. But to do this, you need to know who you’re dealing with. I use the Insights method. To follow this method, first place stakeholders along a color spectrum, and then based on that designation, you can see what triggers stress along with the best ways to remedy that state. I do this to create the best chances for a successful interaction by acknowledging their feelings and speaking to them constructively. It’s also critical to not immediately dive into the details but rather to establish broader themes that the change will encompass. These themes might seem obvious at times, but a smart and accurate tagline for the initiative can become a helpful mantra and reference point for the project’s life. 3. Get change-buy in with a roadmap. Significant changes have a lot of moving pieces and dependencies. To get change buy-in, a project or program roadmap can help illustrate exactly how everything will happen. Using a purpose-built roadmapping tool is the answer to keeping everything organized and a clear vision to stakeholders. Using LIKE.TG, I capture every possible backlog item to ensure no requests or requirements get lost in the shuffle. In this central repository, we used LIKE.TG to prioritize initiatives. I categorize various things up for consideration before putting them into “buckets” to develop and ship together to create incremental value associated with a particular theme. Then I use a cost and complexity versus impact method for evaluating which items should get to the front of the line, and are happy to slot the low-hanging fruit in the front of the queue to deliver more value to stakeholders faster. With prioritized themes set, I build my roadmap. I use lanes for “containers” of specific items, which allows me to keep the roadmap clean and straightforward. Less is more about the level of detail presented to most audiences, but there’s always the option to drill down and get more refined information on a specific roadmap element. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); 4. It’s all about people. While tools, frameworks, and processes get a lot of attention, at the end of the day, what determines a significant change’s success or failure is how it is embraced and supported by the individual it impacts. The key to change management buy-in is having a clear vision and structure people understand so they see the impact of what you’re trying to do and how it affects them. If you don’t think about how they’re going to go about it, it will never be successful. Without engaging with the people who will use it, that will be your number one failure.
The Key to Defeating Analysis Paralysis on Your Roadmap
Thanks to the Internet, there is no unfindable fact. As information is always at the ready, there’s no excuse not to check sources, find corroborating evidence, and research every decision. Our well-instrumented products are delivering a steady stream of data ready to be sliced, diced, and analyzed — leaving many of us with a bad case of analysis paralysis. We can learn from others, quantify opportunities, and calculate results. We can experiment, tweak, and modify whenever we’d like; gauging the effects based on hard numbers instead of guesses and anecdotes. But the challenge is sorting through it all. With so many inputs relentlessly adding to our data, it’s hard to know what’s valuable. We could analyze 24 hours a day and never “finish” anything. You Have Analysis Paralysis Our job as product managers requires us to make decisions, prioritize, and plan. While we could theoretically analyze forever, our employers need us to make up our minds and move forward. But how do we know when enough is enough? When do we need to make up our minds instead of conducting another round of research and review? How do we balance backing up our recommendations with data and making those recommendations? Despite everyone telling you not to, sometimes you DO need to listen to your gut. Listening is one of the under-appreciated skills of the trade. How did we get into this situation? Analysis paralysis is a bit of a self-inflicted wound. For decades, thought leaders, investors, and board members have been championing getting out of the office, talking to customers, and performing extensive market research. Thanks to analytics packages, we also now get reams of real-time data on exactly how customers are using our products. We can see how users navigate, their dwell times, and where they click. We can tie back behaviors to conversions and purchases. We can cross-reference it all with demographics, personas, and more. And don’t forget our newfound love of testing and experimentation. We’re no longer restricted to focus groups. We can unleash A/B testing on the masses to measure real-world reactions to various messages, features, and visuals. We’ve armed ourselves with this supporting data to make our cases bulletproof and overcome imposter syndrome. We don’t want to make mistakes, we want everyone to be happy, and we never want things to be our fault. No one would scrap these tools to go back to the old days of crystal balls and analyst reports. But it has had some pretty significant side effects. Our workloads have grown when it comes to sifting through all the available data. Plus there’s now an expectation that every move we make has statistical evidence predicting its impact. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); How Analysis Paralysis Negatively Affects You When too much data breeds indecision, it takes a toll on your ability to be an effective leader and get your job done. It reduces your confidence. Once upon a time, you felt sure of yourself. Now you only feel prepared if you show up armed with a PowerPoint chock full of charts and graphs backing up your ideas. It slows you down. When challenged, you retreat and pledge to “look at the data” even when the answer is obvious. When there’s a crisis requiring immediate action, your quick-twitch mental muscles have atrophied. As a result, you’ll either make poor decisions or no decisions at all. It presents too many options. There’s a time for data, and a time for common sense. Narrowing the field down to a few choices shouldn’t take long, but overanalyzing things makes this a far more daunting task than necessary. It leaves you unsatisfied. But if you’re always seeking the best solution, you’re never positive there’s not an even better choice still out there. Although there may still be room for improvement, this can rob you of both decisiveness and happiness. How Analysis Paralysis Negatively Affects Your Roadmap When you’re trapped in this unfortunate state, roadmapping becomes an unproductive grind. Instead of using rational, logical thought, you begin scrutinizing everything. You poke holes in perfectly adequate decisions. You are obsessing over the details. Once you get in the habit of analyzing everything, it’s hard to take any shortcuts. Yet the demands of the job require you to use your time wisely. If you divert too much energy toward items with minimal impact, you either won’t finish, or you’ll give important things short shrift. It simply isn’t scalable. You are aiming for perfection. There’s no point trying to create a perfect product roadmap because there’s no such thing. Even if you somehow manage to do it, that perfection will be short-lived as we know things will change. Shoot for “pretty good” and don’t sweat the small stuff. You are leaving everything on the table. When your backlog is overflowing with dozens (or hundreds) of items, it’s not easy to whittle things down. But quickly dismissing the undoable, unrealistic, and unnecessary items lets you spend more time on stuff that has a shot of making it on your roadmap. You are damaging your credibility. While you should leverage data where appropriate, you’re also supposed to be an expert when it comes to your product. If you’re unable to be authoritative about your domain, you’re sowing doubts amongst colleagues and stakeholders. Read the Strategic Roadmap Planning Guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '06f68ad8-23a4-4d4e-b15a-e578f0f8adaf', {}); The Key to Defeating Your Roadmap Process Analysis Paralysis is Intuition Shepherding your roadmap along takes a combination of critical thinking and visionary instincts. Here are some tips to keep you from drowning in data by utilizing your intuition. Take baby steps. Roadmaps are not built in a day— at least they shouldn’t be. A roadmap breaks down the steps to create the ultimate vision of the product, and your roadmapping process has levels of its own. Make them as small and manageable as possible. By notching incremental progress, you can bust through those mental blocks and build momentum in the process. Save in-depth analysis for the big stuff. Not every decision requires the same level of rigor and research. Data should inform critical strategic moves. But smaller items with limited ramifications can be made without exhaustive study. Lean on your product vision. With well-defined goals and objectives, many decisions about prioritization should be no-brainers. Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Referring back to themes and North Star metrics can also help. Eliminate bad options quickly. Don’t waste time considering things that you know are bad ideas or unrealistic. Sorting through viable choices is hard enough as it is! Embrace deadlines. While roadmapping shouldn’t involve split-second decisions, it shouldn’t drag on needlessly. Allocate a limited amount of time for each phase of the process. Force yourself and your stakeholders to make up their minds and move forward. Get out of your head. Sometimes it’s hard to break the cycle of self-doubt and panic about making the wrong decision. So take your quandary to a colleague or trusted friend and bounce it off them. An outside opinion can help you snap out of it and push things along. If you’ve got a team under you, you can also try delegating decisions while retaining veto power. Mitigate the impacts. Don’t put all the available development resources onto a single initiative you’re not quite sure about. Hedge your bets and get to an MVP with a skeleton crew. This way, if it doesn’t pan out, you haven’t gone “all in” on a questionable call. Remember, nothing is permanent. Near-term items on your roadmap are pretty likely to play out according to plan. But after six months it’s a fair bet that things are going to get shaken up. You’re going to be frequently reviewing and updating your roadmap again. There’s less need to shoot for perfection for those longer-term items. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Trust yourself. You talk to customers all the time, so you know their problems. Don’t couch statements with “I think.” Command authority and be decisive based on what you know from those conversations. Free Yourself from the Analysis Paralysis Trap When you’ve reached a decision standstill, take a step back. Contemplate whether you genuinely need more information, or if you need just to make a judgement call with your gut and move on. Don’t fear making the “wrong” decisions on your roadmap. Pivoting will happen whether you do all your research or hardly any at all. Need more help deciding what to put on your roadmap? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '555f9324-4b50-4d5c-90fa-38516ce6484a', {});
The Key to Driving Alignment is Remote Collaborative Exercises, Featuring Isabelle Berner VP of Product
Collaboration” and “remote work” may not seem like a perfect match. But teams can’t skimp on group work because the days of everyone being in the same room are a distant memory that may never return in quite the same way. There’s still no real replacement for real-time, dynamic discussions and exercises to foster stakeholder alignment. Asynchronous apps have their place, but sometimes you need everyone to debate and sort through things together. According to Isabelle Berner, Director of Product Management at Def Method, the secret is intentionality. She shared her suggestions and tips during our recent webinar “What’s in Your Product Stack: Collaboration.” Berner, 12-year product management career included stints at Pivotal and Betterment, joining the software development consultancy specializing in Lean and Agile. She is a true believer in the importance of working together on these fundamental product issues. As a consultant, Berner has seen a wide range of collaboration challenges. But she firmly believes “collaboration is the foundation upon which great products are built” and that product managers can be effective catalysts for this activity. “The role of facilitating a lot of remote collaboration conversations comes to the product manager. Often product managers have been part of a lot of different teams, and so they maybe have a better read on where collaboration is flawed.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); To Drive Alignment, First Look at Your Team Establishing rapport and respect. An essential ingredient in successful remote collaboration is creating familiarity, comfort, and trust with colleagues before attempting true collaboration. “It’s good to spend time with each other one-on-one. Even if it’s on work-related items so we can appreciate each other as human beings,” Berner said. “I love to do walking one-on-ones. Just moving in a direction together and talking about something—it’s nice to stretch your legs and really good for building rapport.” Berner also finds standups can be another forum to get teams more comfortable with opening up and talking about important issues. “I started seeing the value of standups when I worked at Betterment,” Berner said. “Being tuned in to what everyone’s working on and being able to air any challenges that we’re up against quickly. I’ve carried that with me and never stopped doing standups whenever I’m on a project.” However, standups come with their own risks to the team dynamic, especially when they become placeholders that morph into some of the larger meetings and conversations the team should have in a more intentional and dedicated forum. “Something to mitigate that is to have someone in your standup that’s responsible for putting a pin in those conversations and making sure that they happen because they’re important,” Berner said. “But keeping the standup short and moving along is essential.” Creating a feedback-friendly culture. Being open and honest in a work setting doesn’t always come naturally. People don’t want to step on any toes or offend anyone, both out of civility and protect their own careers. But an environment that encourages authentic dialog is essential to avoid groupthink-driven disasters. Organizations need people to challenge assumptions, ask “why” more often, and voice their opinions. And while a suggestion box or an “open door” policy might try to set that tone, people need to walk the walk as well. “A great way to establish a culture of giving and receiving feedback is to ask for it. Ask for some specific feedback. Then listen to it and hold yourself accountable to respond to that feedback and show the team how you do that. That’s an easy way to show that feedback can make a big difference.” Berner is a big fan of Team Speedback. This one-hour activity is for everyone on the team. Each person writes down a piece of feedback for every other member. They then share that feedback one-on-one in a speed-dating type of format. “You have an opportunity to give and receive feedback with every single member of the team. ” Berner said, adding that holding these once every month or two “sets the expectation that this is an OK thing to do, and it makes it a lot less scary if you’re doing it regularly.” Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3eb23c05-aee3-46a4-9662-df983ee6cc53', {}); Drive Alignment with Stakeholders Remote Collaboration Exercises Define goals and anti-goals. A lack of alignment on the objectives of an initiative creates a shaky foundation for any product team. But if the group hasn’t put in a concerted joint effort to build a consensus, chances are team members are operating under various assumptions. One of Berner’s favorite exercises to ensure everyone agrees on what they’re trying to do (and not do) is defining Goals and Anti-Goals. “This is a very tactical piece of collaboration. But it really sets teams up to collaborate effectively and build on that if they have an obvious understanding of what their goals are and also a sense of ownership of those goals,” Berners said. The very act of going through this exercise together and putting in the work also strengthens the team’s bonds. This co-laboring creates a stronger consensus since they all witnessed and took part in the process. “Working together to achieve a shared objective and a shared set of goals is important towards driving that ownership of goals,” Berner said. “That ties into group idea generation and how to facilitate collaborative conversations.” Have a remote collaboration group meeting. This group exercise takes about an hour and requires no preparation. Get the team, and any stakeholders get in the same real or virtual room. This meeting’s goal is for everyone to agree upon what they’re trying to accomplish in the next three-to-six months. First, give each attendee their own color sticky notes to write down what they understand to be goals. They should also add what they don’t consider essential for this timeframe. This is why it’s essential to establish those dates upfront. Then after everyone’s scribbled ideas down, the group shares their goals or anti-goals round-robin style. This way, each person has an opportunity to share what they think is most important. “If people have something similar, group other people’s stickies in that category. And you end up with a series of categories for things that might be considered goals.” Berner said. “Then, from a facilitation standpoint, you can take these goals, summarize them, refine them, and then ultimately vote on which ones are most important as a group.” Get Buy-In and Budget Approval on Your Product Stack➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'c4f7dcc8-378e-4b20-9c16-637fcb9589a5', {"region":"na1"}); Include ownership The benefits of this exercise go far beyond alignment. Inclusivity in the process also creates a sense of ownership. “Being part of the process of coming up with the goals is really empowering for the people on your team,” Berner said. “They’ll understand the goals a lot better because they’ve had these conversations, and they’ll care about them a lot more because they had a hand in choosing what was most important to accomplish.” Anti-goals Agreeing on the anti-goals is also sometimes even more valuable than the goals themselves. “What is something important down the line or something that might be seductive and distracting but that isn’t actually the most important goal for us right now?” Berner says calling out these out-of-scope goals brings additional clarity and focus for everyone and might be the most important discussions of all. “When someone in the room thinks an anti-goal should be a goal, surfacing and bubbling up this misalignment and then being able to talk through it and to talk about the relative priority of goals and then make a decision together that something that one person thought should be a goal is actually an anti-goal,” Berner said. “This is where the trickier, more sensitive conversations happen.” The final step is each participant “dot voting” on how to prioritize those categorized goals. “You want to have clarity about not just what your goals are, but what your most important goals are,” Berner added. If this sounds hard or even undoable in a remote or distributed environment, using a virtual whiteboard such as Miro can recreate the actual pen and paper feeling. As an added benefit, there will now be a “permanent” digital record of the exercise’s outcome for newcomers to the team or when someone wants to revisit a decision. That isn’t usually possible since someone else will need the IRL whiteboard for the next meeting in that conference room. What’s at stake is what matters. By collaboratively aligning around goals, this common understanding filters down into every other aspect of product management. They can even show up in user stories tying small, incremental work to the big picture and laddering up to the business and user value. Berner also cited product roadmaps as another instance where this coherent vision can play a role. “Focusing on outcomes versus outputs, but really telling the story through your roadmaps of what those outcomes are, what they mean to your users, and how they benefit the business helps with that communication and connecting people with what they’re building and why it matters.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); It’s also wise to revisit things regularly. Priorities and goals might change or evolve but not automatically flow down through the rest of the organization. Berner recommends using stoplight check-ins to keep everyone on the same page. “Have your stoplight check-ins, or just your ten-minute ‘is this on-track/off-track and then address the things that are off-track,” Berner said. “I’ve seen goals sit and get dusty in a corner, and it’s not pretty.” Berner also recommends excluding stakeholders from these stoplight check-ins and retrospectives. “You want the team not to have to worry about any repercussions if a goal is off-track and just be able to have transparent, problem-solving conversations about getting it back on track,” she said. Spending 15 minutes per week every week or two isn’t much time to confirm things are still headed in the right direction. Other Tips for Remote Collaboration Challenges Replacing the natural interactions that occur in a physical workplace doesn’t happen by itself. Creating surrogates for watercooler time requires some real effort. Berner’s biggest concern is that a distributed workforce isn’t celebrating wins like they usually would, which can impact morale and take some of the fun out of working on an exciting project with peers you like and respect. “Getting everyone energized and excited about what’s being accomplished is important,” Berner said. At Def Method, they’ve carved out time in their weekly company meeting for that and have also made little gestures of gratitude, such as sending contributors a care basket after completing something big or putting in the extra effort. To learn about other ways remote collaboration teams can work together, you can watch the entire webinar for free.
The Key to Driving Alignment is Remote Collaborative Exercises, Featuring Isabelle Berner VP of Product
Collaboration” and “remote work” may not seem like a perfect match. But teams can’t skimp on group work because the days of everyone being in the same room are a distant memory that may never return in quite the same way. There’s still no real replacement for real-time, dynamic discussions and exercises to foster stakeholder alignment. Asynchronous apps have their place, but sometimes you need everyone to debate and sort through things together. According to Isabelle Berner, Director of Product Management at Def Method, the secret is intentionality. She shared her suggestions and tips during our recent webinar “What’s in Your Product Stack: Collaboration.” Berner, 12-year product management career included stints at Pivotal and Betterment, joining the software development consultancy specializing in Lean and Agile. She is a true believer in the importance of working together on these fundamental product issues. As a consultant, Berner has seen a wide range of collaboration challenges. But she firmly believes “collaboration is the foundation upon which great products are built” and that product managers can be effective catalysts for this activity. “The role of facilitating a lot of remote collaboration conversations comes to the product manager. Often product managers have been part of a lot of different teams, and so they maybe have a better read on where collaboration is flawed.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '57ff7e42-ccfa-4d9e-b5be-8a0f6ba69363', {}); To Drive Alignment, First Look at Your Team Establishing rapport and respect. An essential ingredient in successful remote collaboration is creating familiarity, comfort, and trust with colleagues before attempting true collaboration. “It’s good to spend time with each other one-on-one. Even if it’s on work-related items so we can appreciate each other as human beings,” Berner said. “I love to do walking one-on-ones. Just moving in a direction together and talking about something—it’s nice to stretch your legs and really good for building rapport.” Berner also finds standups can be another forum to get teams more comfortable with opening up and talking about important issues. “I started seeing the value of standups when I worked at Betterment,” Berner said. “Being tuned in to what everyone’s working on and being able to air any challenges that we’re up against quickly. I’ve carried that with me and never stopped doing standups whenever I’m on a project.” However, standups come with their own risks to the team dynamic, especially when they become placeholders that morph into some of the larger meetings and conversations the team should have in a more intentional and dedicated forum. “Something to mitigate that is to have someone in your standup that’s responsible for putting a pin in those conversations and making sure that they happen because they’re important,” Berner said. “But keeping the standup short and moving along is essential.” Creating a feedback-friendly culture. Being open and honest in a work setting doesn’t always come naturally. People don’t want to step on any toes or offend anyone, both out of civility and protect their own careers. But an environment that encourages authentic dialog is essential to avoid groupthink-driven disasters. Organizations need people to challenge assumptions, ask “why” more often, and voice their opinions. And while a suggestion box or an “open door” policy might try to set that tone, people need to walk the walk as well. “A great way to establish a culture of giving and receiving feedback is to ask for it. Ask for some specific feedback. Then listen to it and hold yourself accountable to respond to that feedback and show the team how you do that. That’s an easy way to show that feedback can make a big difference.” Berner is a big fan of Team Speedback. This one-hour activity is for everyone on the team. Each person writes down a piece of feedback for every other member. They then share that feedback one-on-one in a speed-dating type of format. “You have an opportunity to give and receive feedback with every single member of the team. ” Berner said, adding that holding these once every month or two “sets the expectation that this is an OK thing to do, and it makes it a lot less scary if you’re doing it regularly.” Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3eb23c05-aee3-46a4-9662-df983ee6cc53', {}); Drive Alignment with Stakeholders Remote Collaboration Exercises Define goals and anti-goals. A lack of alignment on the objectives of an initiative creates a shaky foundation for any product team. But if the group hasn’t put in a concerted joint effort to build a consensus, chances are team members are operating under various assumptions. One of Berner’s favorite exercises to ensure everyone agrees on what they’re trying to do (and not do) is defining Goals and Anti-Goals. “This is a very tactical piece of collaboration. But it really sets teams up to collaborate effectively and build on that if they have an obvious understanding of what their goals are and also a sense of ownership of those goals,” Berners said. The very act of going through this exercise together and putting in the work also strengthens the team’s bonds. This co-laboring creates a stronger consensus since they all witnessed and took part in the process. “Working together to achieve a shared objective and a shared set of goals is important towards driving that ownership of goals,” Berner said. “That ties into group idea generation and how to facilitate collaborative conversations.” Have a remote collaboration group meeting. This group exercise takes about an hour and requires no preparation. Get the team, and any stakeholders get in the same real or virtual room. This meeting’s goal is for everyone to agree upon what they’re trying to accomplish in the next three-to-six months. First, give each attendee their own color sticky notes to write down what they understand to be goals. They should also add what they don’t consider essential for this timeframe. This is why it’s essential to establish those dates upfront. Then after everyone’s scribbled ideas down, the group shares their goals or anti-goals round-robin style. This way, each person has an opportunity to share what they think is most important. “If people have something similar, group other people’s stickies in that category. And you end up with a series of categories for things that might be considered goals.” Berner said. “Then, from a facilitation standpoint, you can take these goals, summarize them, refine them, and then ultimately vote on which ones are most important as a group.” Download Get Budget Approval on Your Product Stack➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, 'c4f7dcc8-378e-4b20-9c16-637fcb9589a5', {"region":"na1"}); Include ownership The benefits of this exercise go far beyond alignment. Inclusivity in the process also creates a sense of ownership. “Being part of the process of coming up with the goals is really empowering for the people on your team,” Berner said. “They’ll understand the goals a lot better because they’ve had these conversations, and they’ll care about them a lot more because they had a hand in choosing what was most important to accomplish.” Anti-goals Agreeing on the anti-goals is also sometimes even more valuable than the goals themselves. “What is something important down the line or something that might be seductive and distracting but that isn’t actually the most important goal for us right now?” Berner says calling out these out-of-scope goals brings additional clarity and focus for everyone and might be the most important discussions of all. “When someone in the room thinks an anti-goal should be a goal, surfacing and bubbling up this misalignment and then being able to talk through it and to talk about the relative priority of goals and then make a decision together that something that one person thought should be a goal is actually an anti-goal,” Berner said. “This is where the trickier, more sensitive conversations happen.” The final step is each participant “dot voting” on how to prioritize those categorized goals. “You want to have clarity about not just what your goals are, but what your most important goals are,” Berner added. If this sounds hard or even undoable in a remote or distributed environment, using a virtual whiteboard such as Miro can recreate the actual pen and paper feeling. As an added benefit, there will now be a “permanent” digital record of the exercise’s outcome for newcomers to the team or when someone wants to revisit a decision. That isn’t usually possible since someone else will need the IRL whiteboard for the next meeting in that conference room. What’s at stake is what matters. By collaboratively aligning around goals, this common understanding filters down into every other aspect of product management. They can even show up in user stories tying small, incremental work to the big picture and laddering up to the business and user value. Berner also cited product roadmaps as another instance where this coherent vision can play a role. “Focusing on outcomes versus outputs, but really telling the story through your roadmaps of what those outcomes are, what they mean to your users, and how they benefit the business helps with that communication and connecting people with what they’re building and why it matters.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); It’s also wise to revisit things regularly. Priorities and goals might change or evolve but not automatically flow down through the rest of the organization. Berner recommends using stoplight check-ins to keep everyone on the same page. “Have your stoplight check-ins, or just your ten-minute ‘is this on-track/off-track and then address the things that are off-track,” Berner said. “I’ve seen goals sit and get dusty in a corner, and it’s not pretty.” Berner also recommends excluding stakeholders from these stoplight check-ins and retrospectives. “You want the team not to have to worry about any repercussions if a goal is off-track and just be able to have transparent, problem-solving conversations about getting it back on track,” she said. Spending 15 minutes per week every week or two isn’t much time to confirm things are still headed in the right direction. Other Tips for Remote Collaboration Challenges Replacing the natural interactions that occur in a physical workplace doesn’t happen by itself. Creating surrogates for watercooler time requires some real effort. Berner’s biggest concern is that a distributed workforce isn’t celebrating wins like they usually would, which can impact morale and take some of the fun out of working on an exciting project with peers you like and respect. “Getting everyone energized and excited about what’s being accomplished is important,” Berner said. At Def Method, they’ve carved out time in their weekly company meeting for that and have also made little gestures of gratitude, such as sending contributors a care basket after completing something big or putting in the extra effort. To learn about other ways remote collaboration teams can work together, you can watch the entire webinar for free.
The Most Under-Appreciated Product Management Skill
Thanks to the Internet, there is no unfindable fact. As information is always at the ready, there’s no excuse not to check sources, find corroborating evidence, and research every decision. Our well-instrumented products are delivering a steady stream of data ready to be sliced, diced, and analyzed — leaving many of us with a bad case of analysis paralysis. We can learn from others, quantify opportunities, and calculate results. We can experiment, tweak, and modify whenever we’d like; gauging the effects based on hard numbers instead of guesses and anecdotes. But the challenge is sorting through it all. With so many inputs relentlessly adding to our data, it’s hard to know what’s valuable. We could analyze 24 hours a day and never “finish” anything. You Have Analysis Paralysis Our job as product managers requires us to make decisions, prioritize, and plan. While we could theoretically analyze forever, our employers need us to make up our minds and move forward. But how do we know when enough is enough? When do we need to make up our minds instead of conducting another round of research and review? How do we balance backing up our recommendations with data and making those recommendations? Despite everyone telling you not to, sometimes you DO need to listen to your gut. Listening is one of the under-appreciated skills of the trade. How did we get into this situation? Analysis paralysis is a bit of a self-inflicted wound. For decades, thought leaders, investors, and board members have been championing getting out of the office, talking to customers, and performing extensive market research. Thanks to analytics packages, we also now get reams of real-time data on exactly how customers are using our products. We can see how users navigate, their dwell times, and where they click. We can tie back behaviors to conversions and purchases. We can cross-reference it all with demographics, personas, and more. And don’t forget our newfound love of testing and experimentation. We’re no longer restricted to focus groups. We can unleash A/B testing on the masses to measure real-world reactions to various messages, features, and visuals. We’ve armed ourselves with this supporting data to make our cases bulletproof and overcome imposter syndrome. We don’t want to make mistakes, we want everyone to be happy, and we never want things to be our fault. No one would scrap these tools to go back to the old days of crystal balls and analyst reports. But it has had some pretty significant side effects. Our workloads have grown when it comes to sifting through all the available data. Plus there’s now an expectation that every move we make has statistical evidence predicting its impact. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '5894a003-79ce-4ea3-9804-dae280a96106', {}); How Analysis Paralysis Negatively Affects You When too much data breeds indecision, it takes a toll on your ability to be an effective leader and get your job done. It reduces your confidence. Once upon a time, you felt sure of yourself. Now you only feel prepared if you show up armed with a PowerPoint chock full of charts and graphs backing up your ideas. It slows you down. When challenged, you retreat and pledge to “look at the data” even when the answer is obvious. When there’s a crisis requiring immediate action, your quick-twitch mental muscles have atrophied. As a result, you’ll either make poor decisions or no decisions at all. It presents too many options. There’s a time for data, and a time for common sense. Narrowing the field down to a few choices shouldn’t take long, but overanalyzing things makes this a far more daunting task than necessary. It leaves you unsatisfied. But if you’re always seeking the best solution, you’re never positive there’s not an even better choice still out there. Although there may still be room for improvement, this can rob you of both decisiveness and happiness. How Analysis Paralysis Negatively Affects Your Roadmap When you’re trapped in this unfortunate state, roadmapping becomes an unproductive grind. Instead of using rational, logical thought, you begin scrutinizing everything. You poke holes in perfectly adequate decisions. You are obsessing over the details. Once you get in the habit of analyzing everything, it’s hard to take any shortcuts. Yet the demands of the job require you to use your time wisely. If you divert too much energy toward items with minimal impact, you either won’t finish, or you’ll give important things short shrift. It simply isn’t scalable. You are aiming for perfection. There’s no point trying to create a perfect product roadmap because there’s no such thing. Even if you somehow manage to do it, that perfection will be short-lived as we know things will change. Shoot for “pretty good” and don’t sweat the small stuff. You are leaving everything on the table. When your backlog is overflowing with dozens (or hundreds) of items, it’s not easy to whittle things down. But quickly dismissing the undoable, unrealistic, and unnecessary items lets you spend more time on stuff that has a shot of making it on your roadmap. You are damaging your credibility. While you should leverage data where appropriate, you’re also supposed to be an expert when it comes to your product. If you’re unable to be authoritative about your domain, you’re sowing doubts amongst colleagues and stakeholders. Read the Strategic Roadmap Planning Guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '06f68ad8-23a4-4d4e-b15a-e578f0f8adaf', {}); The Key to Defeating Your Roadmap Process Analysis Paralysis is Intuition Shepherding your roadmap along takes a combination of critical thinking and visionary instincts. Here are some tips to keep you from drowning in data by utilizing your intuition. Take baby steps. Roadmaps are not built in a day— at least they shouldn’t be. A roadmap breaks down the steps to create the ultimate vision of the product, and your roadmapping process has levels of its own. Make them as small and manageable as possible. By notching incremental progress, you can bust through those mental blocks and build momentum in the process. Save in-depth analysis for the big stuff. Not every decision requires the same level of rigor and research. Data should inform critical strategic moves. But smaller items with limited ramifications can be made without exhaustive study. Lean on your product vision. With well-defined goals and objectives, many decisions about prioritization should be no-brainers. Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Referring back to themes and North Star metrics can also help. Eliminate bad options quickly. Don’t waste time considering things that you know are bad ideas or unrealistic. Sorting through viable choices is hard enough as it is! Embrace deadlines. While roadmapping shouldn’t involve split-second decisions, it shouldn’t drag on needlessly. Allocate a limited amount of time for each phase of the process. Force yourself and your stakeholders to make up their minds and move forward. Get out of your head. Sometimes it’s hard to break the cycle of self-doubt and panic about making the wrong decision. So take your quandary to a colleague or trusted friend and bounce it off them. An outside opinion can help you snap out of it and push things along. If you’ve got a team under you, you can also try delegating decisions while retaining veto power. Mitigate the impacts. Don’t put all the available development resources onto a single initiative you’re not quite sure about. Hedge your bets and get to an MVP with a skeleton crew. This way, if it doesn’t pan out, you haven’t gone “all in” on a questionable call. Remember, nothing is permanent. Near-term items on your roadmap are pretty likely to play out according to plan. But after six months it’s a fair bet that things are going to get shaken up. You’re going to be frequently reviewing and updating your roadmap again. There’s less need to shoot for perfection for those longer-term items. hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Trust yourself. You talk to customers all the time, so you know their problems. Don’t couch statements with “I think.” Command authority and be decisive based on what you know from those conversations. Free Yourself from the Analysis Paralysis Trap When you’ve reached a decision standstill, take a step back. Contemplate whether you genuinely need more information, or if you need just to make a judgement call with your gut and move on. Don’t fear making the “wrong” decisions on your roadmap. Pivoting will happen whether you do all your research or hardly any at all. Need more help deciding what to put on your roadmap? hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '555f9324-4b50-4d5c-90fa-38516ce6484a', {});
The Most Under-Appreciated Product Management Skill
We write a lot about the skills that product managers need to be effective. The skills are wide-ranging, from ruthless prioritization, the ability to build consensus with stakeholders, metrics-based decision making, and a host of other business and technical skills. Those tend to be the skills that we and others talk a lot about. But what are the most under-appreciated product management skills? To answer that question, we asked several product managers for their thoughts. Here is what we heard. My Favorite Under-Appreciated Product Management Skill is… I’ll start with one skill I think is under-appreciated: silence. By silence I don’t mean not speaking, but rather, knowing when to listen intently and then speaking wisely. Too often, we believe we’re expected to have all the answers. Silence and listening command respect. Silence works wonders in so many scenarios. When interviewing customers to make sure you truly understand what they think. While working with engineering counterparts or UX colleagues to understand their perspective. When discussing priorities with stakeholders. In these situations, silence (followed by thoughtful responses) shows you’re valuing the opinions and insights of others. Download From Product Manager to Product Leader ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '67d2717f-2575-4049-9733-48a5e23d53c4', {}); Crowdsourced Picks I solicited input from other product managers on which underrated product management skills they value. I’m sharing their top picks with you. Intuition For Dieter, a product manager, the innate ability to know the right thing to do doesn’t get enough credit. We’ve preached so much about how we should ditch our gut instincts and hunches. We prize data-driven decision making. But we’re sometimes ignoring the value of our own wisdom. “We have hundreds of methods and tools, but sometimes the solutions come from within…” Optimism Product managers must consider the things that might go wrong. We have to set reasonable expectations then mitigate challenges with delivering solutions on time. This caution and prudence are rightly part of the job. But Stef thinks there’s still plenty of room for a rosy outlook. Her top pick for underappreciated skill: “Optimism! This can be better. We can do it. These setbacks aren’t the end of the world.” Multitasking Product managers have so much on their plates. The role requires attention to disparate details. Keeping tabs on KPIs, dealing with a demanding customer, attending standups, updating financial forecasts, and scheduling customer calls might sound like a crazy week for most people. To a product manager, it looks like a Tuesday morning. That’s why product manager Shreya believes multitasking is the most valuable under-appreciated skill for product managers. Product managers exist in an environment full of entirely unrelated demands and deadlines. There’s a lot to do, and sometimes it all seems to need to happen today. Shreya says “The most under-appreciated skill is multitasking. I couldn’t agree more on adaptability and humility. Product Managers need to wear several hats and adapt based on the ‘n’ number of factors and see what the changing user needs are demanding. Then humility helps to understand various possibilities and perspectives.” Problem-solving Products we build solve problems for users. So hopefully, product managers are already in a problem-solving mindset. But sometimes identifying what the problem is in the first place can be tricky. What is the value of solving the wrong problem? That’s why problem-solving ranks at the top of the list for Praseen, a product manager: “For me, I would say the most under-appreciated skill is to ‘figure out and define the problems’ I should be working on. Most of the cases, what you do daily as a PM is undefined, and to add value, one must first learn ‘how to add value.’” Internal stakeholder empathy Empathizing with customers is nothing new in the list of product management skills. Customer-centric organizations put this goal above all others. It (theoretically) drives every decision they make. But for Aniket, there’s a less-discussed form of empathy not getting its due: Empathy with internal stakeholders: “We hear about empathy towards customers, but empathy towards internal stakeholders is equally important, which goes under-appreciated.” Having empathy with the sales team, engineering, and executives is essential. Are product managers as empathetic in these stakeholder engagements as they would be when hearing a customer’s frustrations and wishes? Humility Product managers are subject matter experts. They’ve spent countless hours researching, interviewing, and testing. They know the ins and outs of their products. They’ve crafted compelling value propositions and perfected product positioning. But for Paul, the expertise and confidence generated by that hard work can make you an expert, yet product can always learn more from customers, prospects, and stakeholders. Instead of settling for their current level of knowledge, they should always yearn for more. Paul says “Humility is a critical skill for product managers. Recognizing that what you ‘know’ is only an assumption. Acknowledging that everyone you interact with has something to teach you means you’ll never stop getting better.” Adaptability Product management is not a career for people who want to do the same thing every day. It’s about the furthest you can get from working an assembly line because the demands of the job require the mental nimbleness to switch from one task to the next. These duties span a wide assortment of domains and deliverables. For product manager Carey, rolling with these changes but thriving in that environment is a top unrecognized trait. “The most under-appreciated skill is adaptability: The ability to change, to see change, to re-frame, to re-assess.” Reading the room In a similar vein, product manager Jay also believes a product manager’s ability to change is critical. He particularly values the mental and emotional awareness and dexterity to modify one’s approach based on the specific team you’re working with. “Assess your development team’s maturity and adjust your approach accordingly. With an experienced team: don’t get in their way, ask questions, focus externally. With an inexperienced team: be more assertive and guide the team with best practices you’ve seen work before (assuming you know what you’re doing, of course), check-in frequently, use conservative timelines.” Jay also prizes the capacity for gauging your capabilities for the challenge at hand. “On the flip side, you also need to assess your subject matter expertise and act accordingly. Sometimes you know the customers, market, competitors, etc. Other times, you take over a product where you have far less expertise, and you need to eat some extra slices of humble pie.” hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3f36d63f-fe4f-400d-ab83-a64b28767625', {"region":"na1"}); Common Threads In reviewing these responses, I found some patterns. There’s a universal emphasis on product managers knowing themselves, being better coworkers, and optimizing their workdays. Most of these were soft skills. I think that’s because product managers depend on others to deliver great products. It’s a collaborative process. Developing and improving the skills that emphasize those aspects of the role is always appreciated. Even if it never shows up on a job description. Want more leadership tips?Read the Career Guide for Product Managers hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '51f4627c-aefd-4981-92a8-41fe12455dbe', {});
The Product Trust Communication Curve
There’s a concept in business called the trust communication curve. It states that the more trust between people or teams, the less one-on-one communication they’ll need to align on goals. If you graphed that curve, it would look like this. The product trust communication curve follows the same logic. As trust increases, product managers can rely more on communicating information. They can even refer people to the roadmap, rather than repeating twice. And according to the data we’ve collected, product managers want that ability. In LIKE.TG’s 2022 State of Product Management Report, we uncovered interesting data points on this topic. First, most product professionals (62%) share product information with internal stakeholders by hosting live meetings. That is more than 5x the number who said they refer people to the product roadmap and ask them to review it themselves (11%). But when we asked how they would prefer to communicate this information, our survey respondents voted strongly in favor of asking stakeholders to review the product roadmap. As you can see from the response percentages here, many product professionals (45%) would be happy to host a meeting with stakeholders. They don’t mind communicating product strategy, plans, or other details to everyone. But they don’t want to repeat answers to the same people asking the same questions repeatedly. Download the stakeholder analysis guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3eb23c05-aee3-46a4-9662-df983ee6cc53', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Why It’s Valuable to Understand the Product Trust Communication Curve The sooner you establish trust across your company, you can reduce your time repeating yourself to stakeholders. The more they trust the product team, the more your stakeholders will feel confident finding the answers to their questions. In other words, boosting trust with stakeholders is a great way to save your product team a lot of time. In the next part of this post, I’ll offer suggestions for improving your product trust communication curve. What Improves Trust Between Product Managers and Stakeholders? Unfortunately, the first factor that increases trust is one you can’t manipulate: time. I’ve worked with hundreds of product professionals in my career. I have also had the chance to work closely with customers. In my experience, I have found that more seasoned product people tend to trust their processes more. They and they also enjoy more trust from their colleagues. Both factors enable senior product professionals to communicate information once, and they can refer stakeholders to the roadmap instead of answering the same question twice. Some of the trust you’ll earn as a product manager comes only with time and experience. But the good news is that there are things you can do today to improve your company’s product trust communication curve. Yes, even if you’re a newbie to product management. 4 Tips to Improve the Product Trust Communication Curve at Your Company 1. Invest in relationship building. One key to building trust is to build familiarity. Your developers can’t trust you if they don’t know you. Time spent together—even just chatting in the lunchroom or exchanging fun GIFs over your chat app—can go a long way to establishing that level of comfort that leads to trust. Also, the more time you spend talking with stakeholders across the company, the more you can develop a common language to ensure everyone aligns around product strategy, goals, and vision. Every department has a unique shorthand, and your role as a product manager includes uniting all stakeholders around a shared language. 2. Keep your roadmap accurate and up to date. Trust goes both ways. Suppose you want to feel confident that your stakeholders will always be able to find the details of your latest strategy, timelines, and priorities. In that case, you’d better make sure that the roadmap is always current. If your stakeholders trust you—but they don’t trust the roadmap will always be up to date—you can expect them to come to you with their questions every time. And that’s one more reason to use native roadmap software. When your roadmap lives on multiple stakeholders’ computers as static files (XYroadmap-v3-new-FINAL-updated-v2.xlsx), someone could quickly be working from an outdated version. But if you have a purpose-built roadmap app, you’ll have one version—online, to which you can easily invite stakeholders—and updating it will be as simple as drag and drop. 3. Present your product information consistently The details on your product roadmaps will change over time, and you’ll include different information from one roadmap to another. But to build trust, you’ll want to create as consistent a process as you can to present that information each time. For example, if you add an epic or feature to the roadmap, you’ll want to explain how it supports the strategy. That process builds trust because it helps you show stakeholders the strategy behind your decisions. But here’s the key: Include that strategic reasoning every time you add an epic or feature. Using purpose-built roadmap software, you can drop a strategic statement just below the epic in the same bar. What’s important is that your stakeholders learn to find that strategy in the same place each time they see a new initiative added to the roadmap. To the degree your stakeholders have a consistent and predictable experience reviewing your product roadmap, it will enhance their trust in the process—and in you—and make them more self-sufficient. And remember: the more your internal stakeholders become more self-sufficient at staying current on your product strategy, goals, and responsibilities, the less time you and your team will have to explain—and repeat those details. Download From Product Manager to Product Leader➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '0d4b3291-d656-408e-a01c-f54629389934', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
The Product Trust Communication Curve
There’s a concept in business called the trust communication curve. It states that the more trust between people or teams, the less one-on-one communication they’ll need to align on goals. If you graphed that curve, it would look like this. The product trust communication curve follows the same logic. As trust increases, product managers can rely more on communicating information. They can even refer people to the roadmap, rather than repeating twice. And according to the data we’ve collected, product managers want that ability. In LIKE.TG’s 2022 State of Product Management Report, we uncovered interesting data points on this topic. First, most product professionals (62%) share product information with internal stakeholders by hosting live meetings. That is more than 5x the number who said they refer people to the product roadmap and ask them to review it themselves (11%). But when we asked how they would prefer to communicate this information, our survey respondents voted strongly in favor of asking stakeholders to review the product roadmap. As you can see from the response percentages here, many product professionals (45%) would be happy to host a meeting with stakeholders. They don’t mind communicating product strategy, plans, or other details to everyone. But they don’t want to repeat answers to the same people asking the same questions repeatedly. Download the stakeholder analysis guide ➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '3eb23c05-aee3-46a4-9662-df983ee6cc53', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); Why It’s Valuable to Understand the Product Trust Communication Curve The sooner you establish trust across your company, you can reduce your time repeating yourself to stakeholders. The more they trust the product team, the more your stakeholders will feel confident finding the answers to their questions. In other words, boosting trust with stakeholders is a great way to save your product team a lot of time. In the next part of this post, I’ll offer suggestions for improving your product trust communication curve. What Improves Trust Between Product Managers and Stakeholders? Unfortunately, the first factor that increases trust is one you can’t manipulate: time. I’ve worked with hundreds of product professionals in my career. I have also had the chance to work closely with customers. In my experience, I have found that more seasoned product people tend to trust their processes more. They and they also enjoy more trust from their colleagues. Both factors enable senior product professionals to communicate information once, and they can refer stakeholders to the roadmap instead of answering the same question twice. Some of the trust you’ll earn as a product manager comes only with time and experience. But the good news is that there are things you can do today to improve your company’s product trust communication curve. Yes, even if you’re a newbie to product management. 4 Tips to Improve the Product Trust Communication Curve at Your Company 1. Invest in relationship building. One key to building trust is to build familiarity. Your developers can’t trust you if they don’t know you. Time spent together—even just chatting in the lunchroom or exchanging fun GIFs over your chat app—can go a long way to establishing that level of comfort that leads to trust. Also, the more time you spend talking with stakeholders across the company, the more you can develop a common language to ensure everyone aligns around product strategy, goals, and vision. Every department has a unique shorthand, and your role as a product manager includes uniting all stakeholders around a shared language. 2. Keep your roadmap accurate and up to date. Trust goes both ways. Suppose you want to feel confident that your stakeholders will always be able to find the details of your latest strategy, timelines, and priorities. In that case, you’d better make sure that the roadmap is always current. If your stakeholders trust you—but they don’t trust the roadmap will always be up to date—you can expect them to come to you with their questions every time. And that’s one more reason to use native roadmap software. When your roadmap lives on multiple stakeholders’ computers as static files (XYroadmap-v3-new-FINAL-updated-v2.xlsx), someone could quickly be working from an outdated version. But if you have a purpose-built roadmap app, you’ll have one version—online, to which you can easily invite stakeholders—and updating it will be as simple as drag and drop. 3. Present your product information consistently The details on your product roadmaps will change over time, and you’ll include different information from one roadmap to another. But to build trust, you’ll want to create as consistent a process as you can to present that information each time. For example, if you add an epic or feature to the roadmap, you’ll want to explain how it supports the strategy. That process builds trust because it helps you show stakeholders the strategy behind your decisions. But here’s the key: Include that strategic reasoning every time you add an epic or feature. Using purpose-built roadmap software, you can drop a strategic statement just below the epic in the same bar. What’s important is that your stakeholders learn to find that strategy in the same place each time they see a new initiative added to the roadmap. To the degree your stakeholders have a consistent and predictable experience reviewing your product roadmap, it will enhance their trust in the process—and in you—and make them more self-sufficient. And remember: the more your internal stakeholders become more self-sufficient at staying current on your product strategy, goals, and responsibilities, the less time you and your team will have to explain—and repeat those details. Download From Product Manager to Product Leader➜ hbspt.cta.load(3434168, '0d4b3291-d656-408e-a01c-f54629389934', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"});
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